


For him

by shamelessllamapeanutthing



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Prom, Prom Proposal, Smut, Sort Of, anything else?, artist Kyouraku, ballet dancer Ukitake, considering Ukitake graduated, nope - Freeform, not that I can think of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:47:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamelessllamapeanutthing/pseuds/shamelessllamapeanutthing
Summary: Juushiro is Shunsui's high-school celebrity crush, who he felt he had lost his chance with.One gag video brings them together in the most ridiculous way though.ORShunsui asks Juushiro to prom and Juushiro says yes.Did I borrow the title from that one Troye Sivan song? Absolutely.There are not nearly enough ShunUki fiction out there and this is my contribution.I promise to try to keep it light-hearted. Key-word being, 'try'.
Relationships: Kyouraku Shunsui/Ukitake Juushirou
Comments: 50
Kudos: 77





	1. Prologue

_‘Come on, Shun! What is the worst that could happen?’_

_Honestly, Shunsui was old enough to know that sentence was nothing but a precedent to all sorts of pointless trouble, especially when it spilled out of Rangiku’s mouth. It was a stereotype, and one rightly established it seemed, for the way his heart was pounding right now couldn’t be healthy, surely._

_Transfixed, he stared at his phone screen, skin pleasantly warm and… wait, was he blushing?!_

_Somebody whistled to his left, Starrk. Rangiku was patting herself on the shoulder at the apparent success of her plan, even though Shunsui was one hundred percent sure she had never anticipated such an outcome. Kenpachi was presently patting him on the back a little too hard, but too hard was not a concept he understood anyway. Belatedly, Shunsui could recognize that he should be just as happy and excited but given the fact that he wasn’t even sure if he would survive the sensations he was feeling just then, he figured giddy happiness had to be postponed._

_“What are you gonna do, now?”, Retsu asked, eyes warm with understanding. Shunsui shrugged._

…

_Previous day_

Literally fifteen minutes after Ukitake Juushiro had dropped one of his rare, personal tweets that morning, Shunsui, Rangiku and Starrk were out of their classrooms and convening in the cafeteria. Apparently, the innocent tweet by the two years older ballet dancer, that had been posted in reply to one of his fans who had tagged him in a post asking celebrities to share their hilarious prom fails, had sparked an idea in the blonde girl’s head that seemingly _had_ to be shared just then.

In the tweet, Juushiro had confirmed he had never been to prom because of a severe asthma attack that had hit him just two hours prior, and ultimately led to him being hospitalized for a couple of days and Rangiku’s master plan involved Shunsui recording himself asking Juushiro out to their own senior prom as a little joke.

It was harmless, a stupid little trick by one of his hundreds of fans. After all, it was no secret that Kyouraku Shunsui had a lot of feelings for the dancer, and always had since when he was still in high school and Shunsui himself was a Freshman who had just transferred. Except back then, Juushiro’s career was yet to take off as spectacularly as it had, and Shunsui himself was a whole lot less confident and boisterous, never working up the nerve to actually talk to the white-haired man till he graduated.

After that, all doors of communication were shut. While Juushiro was basically a very famous alumnus, there was no lack of them in the Academy. He was relatively young, and so their paths never crossed again, even as Shunsui himself shed his layers of insecurity and fully evolved into this larger-than-life person that he actually was.

All through it though, he remained to pine behind Juushiro from a distance. He never tried to hide his admiration for the older man, his friends knew, his family knew, everybody but Juushiro knew. However, the man had so many fans all across the country that nobody batted an eyelid and the situation remained as it was.

So when Rangiku proposed her little scheme, Shunsui’s first reaction was conjuring an image of them standing beside each other, in matching suits with big smiles across their faces. It made him grin that particularly goofy smile of his that made his younger sister Nanao itch to gouge his eyes out. 

“Come on, Shun! What is the worst that could possibly happen?”, Rangiku swung an arm around his shoulders. Shunsui had a broad bone structure and her arm couldn’t actually span across the width of his shoulder blades, but he didn’t point it out instead, turning and giving her a grin.

“Yeah, like, it’s not as if he’s sitting around keeping an eye out for besotted high schoolers asking him to prom.”, Starrk commented.

“So the best that could happen is it earns you some Twitter clout, the worst is that it gets ignored. There’s nothing to lose.” Rangiku emphasized banging her fist on the rickety cafeteria table, though Shunsui wasn’t fully sure _why_. It was like preaching to the choir. He had been sold on the idea the moment it was birthed.

“Yeah, yeah.” He chuckled. “I will do it. Right now? How about it?”

Rangiku cheered.

Opening the camera app, Shunsui quickly selected the video option and with the typical carelessness of any naturally photogenic and moderately popular high school guy, placed the phone in the first angle his arm came to rest in. Practicing his dazzling smile once, and brushing stray fly-away strands behind his ear, he hit record.

“Well, hello Ukitake-san,” he paused to allow his lips to curl into a flirty little smirk. “Prom is basically a rite of passage for every normal high-schooler and that you missed yours seriously sucks. Now given how I would like nothing more than to have you accompany me to mine, would you be tempted to let this local fan have the honor, and be my date to my senior prom?”

Stopping the recording, he turned to his miraculously silent friends, only to see Starkk scowling at him with a serious lack of vitriol and a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

“I still can’t believe how easily you can pull that shit out of your ass.”, he shook his head.

Shunsui simply cocked a brow, struggling to keep his lips from being tugged into a grin. Throwing a few strands of his jaw-length black tresses behind his shoulder, he winked.

“Inspire thirst, as you thirst.”

Rangiku burst out laughing, Starrk shook his head and told him to never say that again in front of anyone else, ever and he brought up his Twitter app, quickly tagging Juushiro and adding on a bunch of random hashtags his fellow classmates had started regarding prom before he hit 'post'.

He was so not expecting anything to happen, that he forgot all about it minutes after tweeting, convinced that would be the end of it.

(It so wasn’t the end of it.)

…

_The first time Shunsui saw Juushiro was on the hockey field. He was immediately captured by his raw skill and determined pace, and then by his beautiful, muscled thighs. Once the game ended though, the white-haired teen turned around and went back to his teammates, slinging arms around sweaty shoulders and offering pats of congratulations. Juushiro smiled, Shunsui caught sight of it, and judging by the way his heart sped up and his own mouth curled into an imitation of that angelic smile, he knew he was a goner._

_…_

“Ukitake-san.”

The faint lilt of Rukia’s tone suggested amusement, and Juushiro looked up with a smile. His manager Rukia Kuchiki was a friendly young girl and a shrewd manager, but her disposition generally leaned towards a more serious nature. She wasn’t easily amused.

So when Juushiro caught sight of her wide grin, his own eyebrows shot up.

“What is it, Rukia-chan?”

Tearing the earplugs out of her ears, she walked across the room and handed her mobile phone to him, the screen paused on a video she had previously been watching. His official handle tagged in it. 

The face in the frame made Juushiro’s own breath catch. He hadn’t seen him in so long.

Smile growing fonder, Juushiro took the phone from her, curious to see why his manager wanted him to watch a video of his adorably reserved junior from high school. He recognized the background. It was the school cafeteria and that only made his eyes crinkle further as he hit play.

… and what he saw unfolding on the screen wasn’t included anywhere in his little list of things he could realistically expect from this clip. His eyebrows climbed higher across his forehead.

“Well hello, Ukitake-san,” the man’s voice was definitely deeper, and his face had filled out. The little smirk he shot at the screen made Juushiro release a breathy little laugh. This was definitely not what he remembered of Kyouraku.

“Prom is basically a rite of passage for every normal high-schooler and that you missed yours seriously sucks.” _You’re telling me about it,_ Juushiro thought. His cheek tilted over to fall on his open palm, eyes widening a little more in curiosity.

“Now given how I would like nothing more than to have you accompany me to mine, would you be tempted to let this local fan have the honor, and be my date to my senior prom?”

The clip ended with a cheeky wink being thrown at the screen and Juushiro’s eyes were still wide, but for entirely different reasons now. He looked up at a now-giggling Rukia, back down at his phone, and hit replay. As the clip played out again, Juushiro found himself letting out a little laugh of disbelief as his eyes brushed across the smirking image of his junior. His nose was just as sharp and pointed as Juushiro remembered, eyes the very same grey, stormy, powerful and drunk on confidence in the clip now, whereas he could recall them reflecting infinite kindness and gentleness back then. Juushiro loved the color then, and he loved the color now. Confidence suited the man just as well as soft shadows of compassion did.

It wasn’t just the obvious change in Kyouraku’s demeanor alone that surprised the dancer though, it was the proposal in itself. They hadn’t ever even officially met in school. Juushiro didn’t even know the man knew he existed, though realistically there was no way for him to not. Well, he definitely didn’t know he would want to take him out to prom. Nothing had happened that lead up to this, but Kyouraku had put forth a proposal, baited Juushiro, in a sense. Sure, he could dismiss it as antics of a fan but he found he really didn’t want to.

He sat back, eyes still trailing Kyouraku’s smiling face. They hadn’t ever talked, and it was one of the few regrets he had carried away from graduation.

Well, that could be mended now.

…

_The first time Juushiro saw Shunsui was in the art section of the library. Younger as he was, he was easily a couple of inches taller and broader. A small smile danced across his face as his eyes ran all over the page, devouring everything the book he held in his hand had to offer. His eyes widened at a point, lips parting in a surprised gasp before his broad fingers tightened around the spine of the book in anticipation and his eyes narrowed further. He was so engrossed in the book, he didn’t notice Juushiro once in all the minutes he spent standing there, eyes transfixed on the younger man’s face. Curiously consumed as his consciousness was, Juushiro found he couldn’t look away. He never could._

_…_

A single tweet glared back at the group of teenagers with alarming vibrancy the next day, given the fact that it was the same bloody color and font as all of the others it was mixed amongst. The only thing that made it special was the account it had been posted by. @j-ukitake.

Official.

Original.

Verified.

They blinked at the screen stupidly.

Apparently, a fan account had found Shunsui’s video day before and retweeted it with a #same. It had blown up and somehow come to the attention of Juushiro.

Who responded.

With a ‘the honor would be mine’ and a blue heart emoji.

Shunsui was pretty sure his brain had just broken down on him.

_Juushiro Ukitake…_

“What the fuck.”, Kenpachi breathed from over his shoulder. Shunsui wanted to retweet that with a #same.

_… said yes to a prom date…_

“I can’t believe this is actually happening.”, Retsu sighed.

_… with him._

Before he could stop himself, Shunsui breathed, “Hashtag same.” A grin unfurled on Retsu’s round face.

_Juushiro Ukitake said yes to a prom date with him!_

A beam of pure, hysterical disbelief attacked his face. He really did not want to look at himself in a mirror just then.

Transfixed, he stared at his phone screen, skin pleasantly warm and… _wait, was he blushing?!_

Somebody whistled to his left, Starrk. Rangiku was patting herself on the shoulder at the apparent success of her plan, even though Shunsui was one hundred percent sure she had never anticipated such an outcome. Kenpachi was presently patting him on the back a little too hard, but too hard was not a concept he understood anyway. Belatedly, Shunsui could recognize that he should be just as happy and excited but given the fact that he wasn’t even sure if he would survive the sensations he was feeling just then, he figured giddy happiness had to be postponed.

“What are you gonna do, now?”, Retsu asked, eyes warm with understanding. Shunsui shrugged.

Apparently, take his years-long crush to prom.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ummm so remember when I said no angst? haha sorry but you guys are gonna have to forget about that part. -_-
> 
> Just for a little while, I promise!
> 
> I hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haven't edited. Will, tomorrow. Sorry.

Byakuya stuffed his face with the last piece of pizza and groaned. In the privacy of his office, he allowed himself to lick his fingers clean and pick up the small pieces of pepperoni that had dropped off the cheese and fallen into the box before shoving them into his mouth.

He _deserved_ the comfort of greasy, cheap takeout right now.

First off, just this morning, he had run out of shampoo and the store nearest didn’t have it. Unwilling to go further than a block with his hair looking so sticky, he had settled with buying the most appealing alternative and using it. His hair was still suffering.

Secondly, his new assistant Renji _definitely_ had an eye on his sister Rukia. It pissed him off. The foolish redhead was nowhere near close to deserving the pride and joy of his life.

Thirdly, Yoruichi had somehow come to hear that Byakuya was going to pick Juushiro up after his ballet class and, under threat of murder, forced him to promise to take her along so she could hit on Soi Fon, Juushiro’s friend from dance class. Byakuya loathed Yoruichi’s company so he would have to figure out an elaborate excuse to leave early and not take her along. 

Last but not the least, arguably the worst, his client, Ukitake Juushiro, ballet master extraordinaire and complete _fucking_ idiot had said yes to prom with a minor. Without thinking about how that would affect his public image.

Byakuya really deserved this pizza. He was fairly certain he couldn’t cope with any of the never-ending pains in his asses without a good dose of carbs in his system.

…

When Juushiro saw Byakuya’s pink Estoque roll up, he quickly bid Soi Fon adieu and jogged over to his understandably pissed off lawyer. Rukia followed close behind, glowing at the prospect of seeing her brother. Juushiro would be worried about Rukia’s obsession with Byakuya if he wasn’t more than aware of how stupidly in love she was with Renji.

Byakuya didn’t know though, neither did Renji or even Rukia. It was hilarious watching the three interact with each other. Hiding away his grin, he prayed the lawyer was being driven around by his assistant.

Quickly opening the back door of the car and shuffling inside, Juushiro saw Renji’s eyes fixated on where Rukia’s smaller form was following him inside. Byakuya glared at his assistant, who didn’t notice. This time, Juushiro didn’t hold back his smirk.

“Good evening, Byakuya, Renji-kun.”

Rukia’s eyes met Renji’s in the rear view mirror and both of them immediately averted their gazes. The redhead put the car in gear.

“Respectfully, Juushiro,” Byakuya intoned from where he sat with his arms crossed across his chest. “ _What the actual fuck.”_

“He is a minor!” The lawyer _somehow_ managed to remain stoic despite the considerable amount of vitriol in his tone. “You essentially agreed to go out with a minor and you’re not just no one! You’re a celebrity. Do you _want_ to be branded a pedophile so early in your career?”

“Nii-sama, Ukitake-san is just twenty and Kyuoraku is…”

“He is still an adult.” Byakuya bit out. “Frankly, I had considered you to be more competent than that, Rukia.”

Juushiro felt his brows pinching together. This was the single-most annoying aspect of Byakuya, his apparent perfection and expectation of the same from others, often so deep-rooted in his inherent preparedness for disappointment that he couldn’t see when people around his went well above and beyond even his ridiculous standards.

Rukia was the same age as Juushiro. She had finished school by fifteen and gotten through college by eighteen because she always felt overwhelmed by Byakuya’s mounting expectations and was constantly overworking herself to meet them. Objectively, Juushiro knew, the lawyer simply wanted the best for his sister, the best grades, the best career, the best opportunities, the best partners, the best everything but it was frustratingly easy for him to forget Rukia had to be the one reaching out and achieving the best of everything if it was going to mean anything. It was something she could never do as long as Byakuya kept stifling her with his cold attitude. 

“If you had let me finish Nii-sama,” A storm had been brewing in Rukia’s tone for years now. The two siblings were going to end up having a huge argument one day and Juushiro couldn’t wait for it because that was the only way Byakuya was going to understand what he was doing was wrong. “I was just going to mention Kyouraku turned eighteen last week. I am not stupid.”

“She is not only competent at her job, Byakuya, Rukia-chan is an excellent manager.” Juushiro added to soften the blow Rukia’s cold tone was going to land on Byakuya’s delicate feelings. He knew the best way to go about that was to appeal to his pride, which was centred around his sister.

Byakuya didn’t respond, his expression never flinching to give anything away. Silence ruled the interior of the posh lambo till Renji, with an awkward chuckle, asked if anyone else was hungry.

…

“Hey”

Byakuya looked back at Juushiro, down at the cigarette end smoking crimson between his fingers and turned away.

They had decided to have dinner together and Byakuya had been quieter than usual. Rukia was torn between squirming in guilt and flirting with Renji, eventually settling on the former, ultimately making the atmosphere even more awkward. Renji and Juushiro tried to keep the conversation going as best as they could, but when Byakuya eventually excused himself to step out the dancer and assistant shared a conspiring glance outlining their plan to divide and conquer. Juushiro followed Byakuya outside and Renji decided to talk to Rukia.

Juushiro wasn’t a smoker but when he got overly stressed a fag was the only thing that could save his mood. He had lit one up as he looked for Byakuya. By the time he found the lawyer leaning against a strange egg shell green Toyota in the parking lot, his cigarette was almost over.

Byakuya still curled his nose in distaste when Juushiro stepped up next to him. With a huff, the dancer put it out and threw the stub away.

“I know I am paying you to protect me, and by extension Rukia, from any legal troubles Byakuya but honestly, we aren’t dumb.”

Byakuya inhaled sharply, but said nothing.

“ _Rukia_ isn’t dumb, and I know you know that. Maybe it is time to let her know too.”

…

By the time Juushiro got home, he was bone-tired. Byakuya had asked Rukia to accompany him back home when they rejoined her and Renji, and she eagerly agreed. The other two left soon after, because whatever they had in common had already been discussed in great length when they were trying to make up for their mute friends earlier.

The white-haired was presently lying topless on his bed, arms spread out to encompass his modest sized bed, eyes closed out of weariness. He couldn’t be bothered to remove his jeans or take a shower. He had barely managed to summon the strength to put his hair in a bun.

His phone pinged deep inside his pocket, and recognising it as his manager’s ringtone, Juushiro fished out the device with a sigh. When he clicked open his text messages, he saw all Rukia had written was- _‘Check your Instagram message requests.’_

Juushiro made a face, because he had _thousands_ of those. It was a chore he wasn’t willing to fight to complete just then but Rukia was more than considerate as a manager and he knew she won’t ask anything of him this late if it wasn’t extremely important.

With another heavy sigh, he opened his message requests, and sure enough, an interesting username met his eye. He clicked on the text thread of _@kyourakuu_shunsuii_

He accepted the request and was faced with a simple text, a simple text that tugged at his heartstrings in peculiar ways that flushed out the exhaustion from his chest.

_’I hope you weren’t joking lol.’_

If the ‘lol’ was supposed to take off the nervousness laced with the sentence, it did a shitty job and Juushiro sat up. The text had been sent five minutes ago, and he had opened it just in time it seemed, for right in front of his eyes it disappeared from the chat box as Shunsui probably unsent it.

_‘Why would you think so?’_

He waited for a reply to arrive, and it did, prompt.

_‘Why won’t I?’_

_‘Because you have no reason to.’_

Juushiro’s chest felt tight, this was a lot heavier than he wanted their first interaction to be like. 

_‘Did you even know who I was before that clip went viral?’_

The text took eight minutes to arrive, all of which Juushiro spent watching his screen with bated breath as the squiggly dots appeared and disappeared at the bottom of his screen.

_‘Yes.’_

It was a simple response, but Shunsui’s abrupt insecurity wasn’t fair, was it? When Juushiro watched the promposal video, as his fans liked to call it, the man had seemed so sure of himself that Juushiro hadn’t stopped to think twice. This newfound hesitation was an unfamiliar territory and it opened a chasm of insecurities the dancer had buried away under fluttering butterflies and excited smiles.

Like _what if he never wanted me to say yes?_

_‘Did you know who I was before the world came to know me?’_

He sent in quick succession because while he was no longer tired, he was strangely scared. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it registered that his heart was actually thundering around in his chest and he wondered what that meant.

He remembered how gorgeous Shunsui had looked in the library that day, and all of a sudden it was hard to believe that gorgeous actually wanted, sickly, boring Juushiro to be his date. No, he wanted rich, popular Ukitake Juushiro to be his arm candy and the thought constricted his heart into painful knots.

Juushiro huffed out a breathy little laugh, devoid of humour.

He had known what this was, hadn’t he? Why were their insecurities suddenly complicating everything? Shunsui had two years to make a move if just plain, old Juushiro was who he was interested in and he had known that while typing in his acceptance of the date offer. He had been selfish, lapped at the chance to meet his junior again and really, considering how carelessly Shunsui had yet again danced into Juushiro’s world, he had no right throwing the dancer for a loop like this again.

Somewhere in the back of his head, Juushiro was aware no one but he, was throwing himself for a loop here but he’d be damned if he acknowledged that before the morn of the next day.

_‘I have always watched you, ever since the first day I caught sight of you when I was a Freshman, Ukitake-san.’_

The reply came and Juushiro groaned and hid his face in his arm to conceal his flushing cheeks. Pale and white as his skin was, his entire face gave away his embarrassment a little too quickly and he always hated that.

He didn’t know what to think about this, and like a dam torn open, close on the heels of his unwillingness to go through this right now, his tiredness came rushing back into the forefront of his consciousness. He decided he’d deal with this tomorrow, he’d think about what Shunsui meant tomorrow.

Instead, he simply typed, _‘Call me Juushiro.’_

_‘Got it, Juu-chan.’_

Juushiro’s face flamed again. He liked the message in the way of a reply and quickly locked his phone, tossing it away. He buried his face in his pillow and groaned, because this was just pathetic.

A minute later, he picked it back up and sent Shunsui a follow request, lips curling into a fond smile when it was accepted within moments.

…

Juushiro woke up to a cheerful good morning message from Shunsui and smiled all the way to Byakuya’s office.

…

“I started drawing up this contract when I… assumed your date was a minor. It stated strict stipulations that the association not venture into anything sexual on either of your ends and called for his parents’ consent. I have redone it however, and this one merely states that your agreement so far is of one and only one date to the prom, non-changeable in terms of location or occasion, but flexible as to timings, date etc . It states you agree with dress codes assumed by the Academy and that your agreement to this one date does not bind your for more in the future and that if you do want to carry forward the association that will be an entire matter separately. Either of you can terminate it any day though, so there’s that.”

Juushiro blinked. His chest felt funny.

“A contract… for a date.”

Byakuya snorted. “I love how you never seem to factor in your celebrity status in society as an important aspect of each an every situation you land into hereafter.” 

“I _know_ him.”

“Rukia said you never spoke to him before and, I quote, pined like a half-brained middle schooler with his first crush for two years.”

Juushiro gasped.

“Wow. What a traitor.”

“So no, you do not know him and this contract keeps things transparent and safe for you.”

“Won’t he feel weird?”

“Won’t you rather not have bad publicity?” 

…

_‘Can I have your number?’_

Juushiro texted Shunsui the moment he left Byakuya’s office. He would rather he heard about the contract from him than hotshot lawyer Byakuya Kuchiki, who looked at people like he was planning to devour them raw.

_‘Ooooooh, direct. I like it.’_

Juushiro snickered and shook his head as he got in the car. Rukia wished him a ‘good afternoon’ from the driver’s seat which he hummed in response to. She put the car in gear and they left for his yoga classes.

_‘The order here went a little skewed, didn’t it? Shouldn’t you have asked for my number first before asking me out?’_

The reply was instantaneous.

_‘I don’t need to waste time talking to know you’re the one ;)’_

Juushiro laughed, clutching the device close to his chest. Rukia gave him an amused glance from the rear-view but said nothing.

_‘You’re so cheesy.’_

And then- _‘So you think talking to me is a waste of your time?’_

A sweat-dropping emoji followed that text. Shunsui wrote:

_‘That was full of loopholes, wasn’t it?’_

_‘Had a couple, yes. I hope you know I am being nice because that was honestly awful.’_

_‘I am usually better at this, I swear. I still can’t believe this is happening.’_

Juushiro’s smile softened. He had had a hard time believing he got another chance with the guy himself.

_‘It is. Should I be prepared for more fumbling for words than you displayed in your video then?’_

_‘Hmmm no. Check this out- I suffer from amnesia. When did we get married?’_

Juushiro’s eyes widened before his fingers started flying across his keyboard.

_‘Oh you, must suck to have forgotten what your unfortunate husband looks like. It’s okay, we’ll look for him together.’_

_‘I wanna show you my million bucks but I am not close enough to point my compact at you.’_

_‘If you’re not close enough, you must not care all that much.’_

_‘You’re just determined to be unimpressed!’_

Juushiro wiggled around in his seat, catching sight of the perfect opportunity to beat Shunsui at his game. He turned to Rukia, impulsively.

“I am a smooth son of a gun.”

Rukia, to her credit, kept her face completely straight when she said, “Yes, you are. Go, get em’, tiger!” And then her eyes ran over his hair. “Or, uh, snow leopard I guess.”

Turning back to his phone, he quickly typed back a response.

_‘I will be very impressed if you can help me with this one question that has been bugging me for two years now.’_

_‘Uh huh?’_

_‘What’s a smart, attractive man like me doing without your number?’_

A downpour of angry, frustrated emoticons followed and Juushiro couldn’t stop laughing, giddy, blushing, just the right side of sappy.

Shunsui _did_ drop in his number a few seconds later. 

…

Juushiro didn’t call. He didn’t even stop to think about it.

He simply saved the number sent, promised to call later and threw himself in work, first yoga, then lunch, then his afternoon lectures, then ballet. He was determined to avoid the matter at hand, the conveyance of the same and the fact that he was _avoiding them in the first place_ , for as long as he could.

… and by the time evening rolled around his avoidance tactics were nowhere near exhausted.

“Your body is tense. You look more like a kendo master than a ballerina, Ukitake.” Soi Fon commented dryly from where she was sitting against the bar, catching a breather.

It was true, and it pissed Juushiro off. The contract, and what it meant, weighed so heavily in his chest that he couldn’t ignore it even if he actively refused to think about it, and so, just to be petty, he pasted a smile on his lips and crooned at the small black-haired girl in front of him,

“Staring at her Instagram isn’t going to magically make her want you back, Soi Fon.”

Soi Fon flipped him off and Juushiro snickered. Considering the history she shared with Yoruichi, he’d have _never_ said that to anyone else, but so many years of being friends had taught him exactly what and where Soi Fon’s boundaries were. Brutal reminders of what had happened between the two girls didn’t ever phase the ballerina, they fired her up to be better, do better and defeat her ex in every way possible.

In some corner of her heart, Juushiro knew, this was Soi Fon’s way of asking for Yoruichi’s attention, and being worthy of it. He personally thought it was stupid. It had been three years since Soi Fon dumped Yoruichi and Yoruichi realised how shitty her behaviour had been. Ever since then, the older dancer hadn’t managed to take her attention away from Soi Fon for a single second.

He didn’t know why Soi Fon was running from the realisation that Yoruichi was as badly in love with her as she was. All she had to do was give the woman a single hint that she _might_ be willing to try again and Yoruichi would upend hell and heaven to get to her.

It was stupid how Soi Fon was letting her insecurities stand in the way of the only thing she had ever wanted.

Sighing, he continued stretching his muscles out. Unohana-sensei wasn’t going to allow him to dance till she saw improvement in his frame, and presently he had no idea what else he could do.

“Why don’t you just call him?”, Soi Fon asked for the millionth time and for the millionth time Juushiro wondered why he had spilled his guts out to her on Snapchat the moment he left Byakuya’s office.

“I am busy.”

“You are a coward.”

Juushiro didn’t deny that.

“I don’t know how he might react to it.”

“You don’t _want_ to know how he reacts to it. If he doesn’t have a problem, you’re afraid the only thing it could mean is that this entire dating business is a one-hit thing to him. If he has a problem, you’re afraid you’ll end up hurting him. Between his heart and yours now, which do you choose?”

He really didn’t like being friends with her. She talked a lot in front of people she loved.

“I don’t get to choose, that is the entire problem, Soi Fon.”

She gave him an unimpressed look.

“Is this your first time starting a relationship with someone?”

If Juushiro wasn’t a better man, he’d have smacked her smug little face.

“When I said yes in that Tweet, I hadn’t stopped to think about what was happening. He looked so sure of himself, he looked so completely in control, it was easy to go along. I had wanted him and only him for the two years we were together in the Academy and I didn’t even consider how those emotions might get in the way.

“Last night he sent me a text and it was so… vulnerable, it stripped the sense of nonchalance attached to the proposal. He seemed worried, and I just started thinking… and I couldn’t stop… and now…, now I can’t seem to accept the entire thing on face value. What was he thinking? What was I thinking? What did either of us mean? I don’t know and…-”

“Ukitake!” A pair of small, soft hands grabbed onto the sides of his face. He opened his eyes and wondered when he shut them in the first place. “It’s a date! You’re not getting married! You can figure it out from there! It is something you have to do together with him, and not here with me!”

“What if he just wants a popular face on his arm at prom?”

It was easier to say it out loud than he imagined it would be. His chest felt lighter and he let his face lean against Soi Fon’s hands.

Her thumbs brushed his cheekbone, but her face never lost it’s characteristic severity.

“Then he wants a popular face for prom and that’s that. You accept it, he never promised you anything else. If you feel like you can’t do it, you back off. Byakuya has made sure to give you that out.” He didn’t respond, he didn’t quite like the harshness of her words, despite knowing them to be true. Shunsui didn’t owe him anything, but he did. No matter what Byakuya or Soi Fon said, he knew he wouldn’t ditch the guy after agreeing already.

( _I have always watched you, ever since the first day I caught sight of you when I was a Freshman, Ukitake-san.)_

“I can tell you to think of the positives but I don’t believe in planting hope where it might be abandoned to wither and die. That sucks, but what will avoiding the issue change? It will delay the heartbreak, make it hurt worse. I am not asking you to confess, I am asking you to listen to what he says. It’s the easiest way out.”

Juushiro sighed, because _he knew._ He wasn’t a fool, he knew everything she had just told him. It didn’t make following through with the plan any easier.

“Just tell him. You were right when you thought he’d rather be told by you than Kuchiki.”

Juushiro felt his arms fall around Soi Fon’s slim frame, and in one rare display of concern, she hugged him back. Taking deep breaths, he allowed her familiar orange-vanilla scent to flood his senses, closing his eyes to amplify the effect. She didn’t move until he let go.

_Sometimes_ , he didn’t mind being her friend.

“I’ll call him tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> COMMENTTTTTTTT


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry if this chapter seems sort of rushed. I will edit it tomorrow, run a spell check and all that. It's also shorter than usual but I need the next part to be in Ukitake's POV so I had to end here.

Shunsui wanted to ask Juushiro on a date.

Apart from prom, that is, he wanted to take him out to one of those artsy little coffeeshops Rangiku always said he had a habit of stumbling across. He wanted to spend a quiet afternoon trading stories of weird relatives and lost childhood friends, and of times their parents dressed them up in embarrassing costumes for fancy dress competitions in preschool. He wanted to ask Juushiro what his favourite colour was so he could finger paint a portrait of him with shades of the same and gift it to him the next time they met. He wanted to buy him flowers from some flower shop they chanced upon or ice cream from little stands they’d have no way of tracing back. He wanted to kiss Juushiro at his doorstep after he walked him back home.

All of the little fantasies he had dreamed of every night for two years in a row were suddenly frighteningly possible and right within his grasp and he felt like his heart just might beat right out of his chest in excitement.

He didn’t know why Juushiro asked for his number but he couldn’t deny he hadn’t been checking his phone every fifteen minutes all day in anticipation. As the sky darkened, his excitement only grew. A late night phone call was more likely to detour down the spicier lane, after all.

He supposed his friends would have something to say about his unflinchingly stupid optimism but he didn’t really care. They weren’t the ones who landed a date with their crushes, anyway. He must be doing _something_ right in life.

So when his _Truecaller_ finally flashed ‘ _Juushiro Ukitake’_ , at 11 in the night when Shunsui was lightly tipsy at a classmate’s house party, the first thing he did was rush upstairs and kick a half-naked couple out of one of the bedrooms in the house, locking the door promptly after. 

The he picked up.

_“Uh, hello.”_

The voice down the line sounded beautiful, smokey with either sleep or exhaustion but with an ever-familiar deep and commanding tone. Shunsui found he had to sit down.

“I am curious, who taught you eleven was an appropriate time to call people?”, he joked because humour was his coping mechanism and Juushiro’s voice was causing quite the rush in his chest that he needed to cope with. Fast.

“ _Wait, it’s eleven?!”_

There’s genuine surprise in the voice, like Juushiro had actually lost track of time. He cussed softly and Shunsui bit back a laugh.

_“Sorry but you’re a highschooler. There’s no way in hell you were asleep.”_

Shunsui hummed, and then, because moderation of any sense in anything whatsoever was not a concept he particularly adored, said,

“I’ve been waiting to talk to you all day.”

Flirting was safe, flirting was something he was good at, never mind that this was the first time he actually meant every word he said.

_“How’s your day?”_

“It was exciting. I had something to look forward to, after all.”

Juushiro sighed.

_“Mine was super fucking tiring. My friends are infuriating.”_

“We can talk tomorrow if you want.”, he offered.

_“No, no, no. No, this needs to be done today. Umm… do you have a lawyer?”_

“Do you run a criminal check on all your dates?”

An exasperated chuckle sounded, before Juushiro continued.

_“It’s not like that. My lawyer needs to send you a contract, it’s pretty straight-forward, not something you will need a lawyer for but he told me to ask you if you had one anyway.”_

Shunsui frowned, brain wiped clean of the rose tinted smog that had been clouding it all day.

“Lawyer? Contract?”

There was a sharp exhale, and a stuttering laugh, like Juushiro couldn’t quite make up his mind how he wanted to respond.

_“It basically states some ground rules for us to follow-”_

“You know you could just _talk_ to me about your boundaries instead of drawing up a whole contract-”

_“Yeah I know, it’s just, my lawyer thought it’d be safer for me, and you, of course! Please, please don’t take it otherwise.”_

Shunsui instructed himself to breathe, twice, deeply. He wasn’t stupid. Juushiro was a celebrity, of course it won’t be as simple as a tweet and a retweet.

“What else does the contract say?” He made sure his voice sounded cheerful for he had now recognised the smokey quality in Juushiro’s voice to be nerves.

_“Just this and that. A whole lot of words for a whole lot of nothing. You know, legal stuff.”_

He didn’t, in fact, know. He never even read the _Terms and Conditions_ before signing up for things, ever.

He nodded, anyway and glanced at where he was sprawled out on the bed with his legs spread open. Well, realistically, the things he had dreamed up would happen on this call were incredibly improbable anyway. He needed to control his libido.

_“Hello?”_

“Yeah, I am here.” He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting this. Uh… I don’t have a lawyer personally but I could send you the name and contact of my family lawyer?”

_“Perfect.”_ Juushiro sighed, again.

A small smile curled up on Shunsui’s face as he heard the palpable relief in the exhalation. He could almost imagine the older dancer rolling strands of his hair between his fingers like Shunsui had caught him doing a few times in school, before a match began or that one time he was called up on the stage to address the school body because the girl who was supposed to had fainted and star pupil Ukitake Juushiro could always be relied on to save the day. It was an endearing quirk. Shunsui often imagined a braver version of him walking up to Juushiro, covering his fingers with one hand and tucking his hair behind his ear with the other before he caught his lips in a sweet kiss.

_“Umm, you still there?”_

“You’ve been really nervous about this, haven’t you?”

Juushiro’s soft chuckle seemed to roll across Shunsui’s entire body before seeping in through his skin. He shivered.

_“It’s weird and I didn’t want you to think this piece of paper set the boundaries of this… this thing.”_

People often talked about feeling butterflies in their stomach when they spoke to their crushes, he hadn’t realised how _accurate_ the description was before today.

“What does?”

_“You and I, of course! Not an outsider, not a lawyer! It wasn’t even my idea it’s just something he wanted to do for his own peace of mind.”_

“Juu-chan.” He let his voice drawl and revelled in the immediate hush that fell on the rambling dancer. “He is just doing his job, what you’re paying him to do. I am not mad, I mean I was unsure for a second there, but I trust you.”

_I’ve waited for this my entire life, there’s nothing I won’t put on the line, not even my own heart,_ he didn’t say.

_“Yeah, yeah that’s good. Thanks.”_

He hadn’t forgotten how he wanted to ask Juushiro out, but it didn’t feel like the best time, so he smiled and told Juushiro not to worry, bid him good night and cut the call.

…

Upon arriving back downstairs, he found his friends sitting in a circle with their host, his girlfriend and a couple of other kids Shunsui couldn’t recognise. Smirking, he walked over to the raucous group, so loud their laughter rings clear over the loud music and rumbling chatter of the partygoers. Rangiku’s bean bag dipped as he settled behind it, digging his elbows into the black leather cover, watching as an empty beer bottle spun in the middle of their crooked circle.

“What are you all doing?”

Someone handed him a shot glass and he downed it in one go.

“Truth or dare, seven minutes, Never Have I Ever… fuck knows!”, Kenpachi drawled. “We just spun it and it’s not…-”

The bottle slowed to halt…

“… fucking stopping.”

… pointing right at Shunsui.

“What?! You whisper to it or something?” Kenpachi scratched his spiky scalp. Shunsui had told him a million times that no ‘scene’ kid wore his hair like that anymore but Kenpachi had stumbled on BVB at one point and never moved on.

“Shun’s a glass whisperer!” Someone Shunsui _definitely_ did not know crowed… and promptly toppled over on to her neck.

He shook his head.

“Yeah, no I am outta here. You guys play on.”

To be honest, his heart was still singing a soft melody in the background, the rose tinted smog was back full on, Juushiro had given a cute little yawn towards the end of the phone call and Shunsui couldn’t stop grinning like a complete fool. He had absolutely no interest in fucking around with stupidly drunk asshats when he could go home and curl up with Juushiro’s voice firmly in the clutches of his memory till he drifted off.

… except he had never before left a party early and really should’ve known this would earn him some odd looks and jeers.

“Yo, what’s the rush? You going to go rail Ukitake tonight?” Rangiku snickered. He rolled his eyes, and despite the fact that he had heard and engaged with her crude language multiple times before, his chest simply tightened when he listened to her speak of Juushiro like that. “Did he finally find the time to call you?”

“Yeah, what the fuck is up with that dude? I mean, it’s one weird publicity stunt.”

It was such a random comment. He couldn’t even remember speaking to that guy ever before but it made ice pool in his stomach for one heart-wrenchingly long second.

All of a sudden, the contract felt like stones in his belly, heavy, staggeringly so.

This had never occurred to him. Even when the excitement of Juushiro saying yes wore off, and heated doubts as to whether the dancer _even meant it when he agreed to the date_ doubled down upon him, his brain hadn’t conjured up this very plausible scenario of this being just a publicity stunt to the older man.

It was very likely.

Rangiku’s warm hand covered his.

“ _I mean,_ ” she exaggeratedly mocked the heavily accented voice of the stranger, who’s face fell at the obvious jab. “It could also just be that he wants to go to Prom with Shunsui.”

“He is a fucking celebrity.” The man defended himself and really, Shunsui didn’t want this to be dragged out anymore. He already felt like it was getting harder to breathe.

“Well… Shun’s hot!”, Rangiku exclaimed. It was lame, but Shunsui patted her thigh in appreciation. She drunkenly winked, forgot you were only supposed to do it with one, made a show of closing both her eyes and reopening them.

“Ummm no offence Kyo, but Ukitake never gave you the time of the day when you went to school together for two years, what’s changed now? Just his popularity, he has so much more of it, got addicted, and is jumping on another chance to grab more. That’s all this is. You gotta get your name on everyone’s mouth if you wanna get anywhere today and that’s a fact.”

Retsu started _booing_ at that.

Shunsui would be amused if all of this hadn’t started to ring so fucking true deep inside his chest. It made a whole lot of sense that Ukitake fucking Juushiro wanting to go out with him and flirting with him did.

He didn’t know what to say, so he allowed his friends to break out in vehement protests on his behalf. He tuned them out, he didn’t do well with sympathy. The argument petered out, the game never began. He didn’t know why he felt like he was carrying the weight of a couple of extra limbs when he left, though.

Now, wait, that was a fucking lie wasn’t it? He knew exactly why and he couldn’t do anything except wait for the fucking contract to arrive.

…

By the time Mr. Newton, their lawyer, called him in to discuss the contract the next Saturday afternoon, Shunsui had talked himself down. The sweet good morning text from Juushiro, the attached link to an adorable kitten clips compilation on YouTube and the conversation that followed definitely helped.

_‘I am going to see my lawyer to discuss your contract.’_

_‘Oh my God, I am so sorry this has to happen.’_ was what Juushiro responded with. It was decidedly adorable. He could imagine him pouting, not that he had ever seen such an expression on the other man, and it replaced some of the ice in his chest with a pleasant, thrumming warmth.

His fingers remained poised on the keyboard of his phone as he tried to come up with a response to that as another text flew in, just a single line but possessing the capacity to make Shunsui’s heart beat right out of his chest.

_‘we’ll be fine right’_

The lack of proper punctuation shed light on a desperation the expressionlessness of texting often concealed. Shunsui gave himself a second to hesitate and deemed it a waste of time.

The phone rang for just a short while before Juushiro picked up.

_“‘Ello?”_

“You sound like you were asleep.”

_“Mhmm,”_ the moan did _things_ to Shunsui that he never wanted to admit in the broad light of day. _“I just woke up.”_

Without beating around the bush for even a second longer, Shunsui said,

“We’ll be fine. I… I just wanted you to hear it, instead of read it off a screen, I don’t know.”

Juushiro laughed softly, voice still groggy and thick.

_“It’s so flattering to think I make you fumble for words.”_

It caught him off-guard and his brain ran to figure out a witty reply. What he came up with instead, was,

“Umm… you also make me blush, for what it’s worth.”

It was honest, it was vulnerable but Juushiro seemed to need it.

_“There’s a clause in there, that states the agreement was only and only of one date to your Prom and that neither of us can force the other for anything more.”_

“I won’t even think of forcing you to do anything you don’t want to.” 

_“I know, I trust you.”_ and if his own words from the night before repeated to him made a lovestruck sigh punch out of him, he just ignored it. “ _But Byakuya doesn’t and I thought about what you said, it’s true. He’s only trying to make sure I stay safe no matter what.”_

“It will be stupid to hold it against him.”

_“I- my point is, that clause, it’s like, you know…-”_

Shunsui chuckled. “Yeah, who’s fumbling now?”

_“Shut up or I’ll hang up.”_

“Sorry.”

_“i don’t wanna follow that clause. I wanna take you out on a date, that is, before Prom. Would you want to go out with me?”_

Shunsui groaned, laughed, he couldn’t decide what the weird noise rumbling in his throat should be called. Down the line, Juushiro whined in demand of an answer. He thought it was very cute.

“I was going to ask you first!”, he protested.

Juushiro laughed. All traces of sleep had disappeared completely from his tone.

_“That’s not fair. You’ve already asked me out once. It was my turn. Though, can I take it as a yes?”_

He couldn’t help but grin wide like a complete dork, throat brimming with a thick sense of adoration.

Like he could ever have said no to Juushiro for anything.

…

Hours later, exhausted after his visit with the lawyer, he entered a local cafe famous for its sandwiches.

His meeting with Mr. Newton had been daunting to say the least. If the phone call with Juushiro had not happened earlier that morning, he would have left the office and bawled like a child in the stairwell because that piece of paper was so cold, so heartless it made this entire thing between them seem like a deal between two traders, exchanging their time with each other for God alone knew what. It’d have broken his heart in two.

… except Juushiro asked him out on a date when he had literally _no_ reason to except that he wanted to. This couldn’t be a stunt for publicity, this couldn’t be motivated by anything except the pure desire to spend time together.

_(… unflinchingly stupid optimism and all)_

_(… but then he hadn’t let himself hope for so_ **_bloody_ ** _long…)_

His steps felt light and his heart soared. Determined to focus on the positives, and the date, the _date_ Juushiro had asked him on, he pointedly ignored any lingering doubts. They didn’t deserve to exist in the same universe in which Ukitake Juushiro was interested in him.

Mind thus distracted, he didn’t pay attention to who or what was around him as he walked into the cafe. He jerked out of his stupid, smiling reverie when his chest collided with someone’s back.

“Ah, shit!” The stranger exclaimed as he whirled around, tugging the neck of his jacket higher over his chin, the beanie on top of his head leaving only his eyes and nose uncovered.

Shunsui’s eyes widened.

“Juu-chan!” He exclaimed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment and let me know what you thought.
> 
> Come scream at me about Bleach on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/shamelessllamapeanutthing)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I give you, ShunUki date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the typos. 
> 
> Also, I almost took this down a very angsty route before I realised that's just not them. They're too in tune and mature to let anything fuck this up and so, I present fluff and feels and the promise of a quickly approaching conclusion. 
> 
> This might become the first fic I finish XD

Juushiro’s first thought when he recognised Shunsui was that he had underestimated how effective his own delayed growth spurt had been, for the boy who had always towered over him in school now stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him.

His second thought was that Shunsui’s perfume needed to go. It was horribly plain, unacceptable as an accessory for a man with such a vivid presence.

Before he knew it, he was being swept up in the younger man’s arms as Shunsui gave him a tight, warm hug that had Juushiro feeling all soft inside, like he’d give anything to remain squished up in Shunsui’s arms. Strange. He had never been a specially cuddly person before.

When Shunsui released him, it was with a delicate flush decorating his copper skin. Up close, Juushiro could make out fine laugh lines sweeping the area around Shunsui’s eyes, and there was a cluster of little moles closer to his temple that the video hadn’t picked up.

“Sorry, Juu-chan, I just got a little excited.” Shunsui stroked the back of his head and peered up at Juushiro from under the fall of his ridiculously long eyelashes. 

“Wow” Juushiro spoke without thinking first “You really aren’t as smooth as your video suggested.”

… and maybe that was sort of a mean thing to say to someone, but he got the pleasure of watching Shunsui’s blush darken and he decided that was a sight too endearing to pass up on.

He bit his lip and watched Shunsui’s eyes sharpen with indignation, before a dashing smile, much alike the grin Shunsui had flashed Juushiro in the promposal video, spread across his mouth and a hand wrapped itself around Juushiro’s palm.Shunsui leaned closer.

“Of course I am not. It’s like you’re constantly underestimating how smitten I am with you.” 

Juushiro’s eyes widened as his cheeks flared up, and he gasped softly at Shunsui’s clearly challenging eyebrow quirk, as if meant to say, ‘your move’. Caught off guard by the tables being so abruptly turned against him, he impulsively tugged his beanie lower.

“How did you even recognise me?”

Shunsui’s brow crinkled.

“Are you shitting me? Half of your face is visible to me right now, while I am hundred percent positive that I’d manage to recognise you by just your ear or something.”

That made Juushiro snigger and he rolled his eyes.

“That is literally impossible.”

“Well, impossible _literally_ says I am possible.”

Juushiro couldn’t hold back his laughter at the ridiculousness of this man anymore, face only heating further at the sight of Shunsui’s cute little smile as he took in Juushiro’s shaking shoulders and crinkled eyes. Standing in front of the man right now, Juushiro’s insecurities the evening before felt like a wrinkled page he had mistakenly torn out of an old, irrelevant tome and carried around with him like an unseeing fool who refused to understand that he didn’t need those feelings anymore.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, you’re a dork and while I have you here, you know, if you’re free, wanna have coffee with me?”

…

They ultimately couldn’t have coffee together, because a group of teenagers off to the side had recognised Juushiro when the upper half of his jacket fell away from his chin for a second but it was to be expected. Juushiro was a star on the rise in this little town, everyone’s darling with a gorgeous smile and incredible talent. He was especially popular amongst youngsters, and people speculated he had drawn the interest of an entire generation, that took no interest in ballet, towards the dance form. 

Juushiro felt humbled at every single reminder of how much the people here loved him, but he didn’t want anyone to crash his date.

_His date,_ he muffled a silly giggle.

They got their drinks to go and a sandwich each, then slipped out of the cafe and into Juushiro’s car and he was always going to be infinitely thankful for Rukia as the girl, to her credit, took one look at Shunsui, gave her head a mighty shake, and turned around to greet them with a polite smile on her face. 

The world could throw literal immortal zombies at the Kuchikis and it won’t phase them, much less a random stranger, that their employer had randomly decided to date, in one of their cars with no preamble or explanation.

Juushiro frowned, _(because, wait, this was dating, right? How many dates did you have to go on before you could officially say you were dating someone?)_ , and then straightened out his expression and turned to Shunsui.

“I am sorry about that.”

Shunsui shook his head and grinned at him.

“Oh, no, it’s totally fine. To be very honest, I still can’t believe this is even happening right now. That I am here, with you. I could die and that still won’t ruin my mood today.”

Juushiro felt his cheeks heating up again, which was totally ridiculous because he wasn’t a hormonal teenaged virgin, and instinctively tugged his beanie down over his ears to hide his red face. Next to him, Shunsui burst out laughing.

“I take it back. You’re pretty fucking smooth.”

Shunsui gave two little chuckles that broke off in the middle and ended with endearing sniggers that had Juushiro cursing the beanie obstructing his view.

He didn’t get a chance to remove it, however, for Shunshui had already pulled it away. He touched his hair in surprise and stared into amused grey eyes as Shunsui leaned closer and _flicked_ his nose.

“You have literally no excuse to hide from me in here.”

Juushiro was honestly considering reaching forward and planting a big, wet one on Shunsui’s grinning mouth just to one up him when Rukia interrupted them with an _‘ahem’_ that sounded extremely pointed for the simple action of clearing one’s throat.

Juushiro couldn’t decide how that was even possible, so decided to blame the Kuchiki genes again.

“Where are we going, today?”

Shunsui placed a hand on his. “My place?”

…

Shunsui’s house was quite unlike Juushiro’s, with soft beige walls and a deeper carpet to contrast with Juushiro’s cooler-toned walls, blue accents and minimalistic decor. The furniture in Shunsui’s living room was mostly a combination of ochre tones with a white so spotless Juushiro barely kept himself from asking what Shunsui used to clean the surfaces. The small, vintage looking TV set was clearly the highlight of the room though, and Juushiro didn’t have to be an expert technician or anything to know that Shunsui must have paid a fortune for that thing.

They crossed the living room to the cozy, little kitchen that looked like it had been picked right out of an aesthetic magazine with its variety of potted plants, all in shades of beige and brown, similarly soft toned appliances, plush brown rug and a door to the side that opened to a well-kept garden and a patio further back. Juushiro tugged on Shunsui’s sleeve and the younger man gave in with a roll of his eyes, holding the door open for Juushiro.

They sat down across each other at the patio table and for a couple of minutes, neither of them said a word, eyeing the garden with ridiculous amounts of interest and giving each other a polite nod every time their eyes met, unaware of what they were supposed to do with this fresh blanket of awkwardness that had settled snugly over both of them. It was embarrassing, but Juushiro, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out a single thing to say to Shunsui.

“I hate how in the movies they never show us how difficult this part is.”, Shunsui finally mentioned, and Juushiro jumped on to the thread of conversation with a sigh so relieved it made Shunsui smirk.

“Right! It’s like two people look into each others’ eyes and bam! There are sparks everywhere and the next thing you know, they’re already in bed together!”

Shunsui’s grin only widened further.

“That’s… not exactly how it happens either. You don’t watch a lot of romance movies, do you?”

“No, because they’re silly. I was trying to keep the conversation running, but I won’t if factual inaccuracy is such a big pain in your ass.”

Shunsui’s eyes sparked with a sort of mischief that had Juushiro’s heart racing in his chest and he watched the black-haired man’s grin grow fonder.

“I literally haven’t heard you throw as much sass around in all those years at school as I have in these few days.”

Juushiro grinned.

“Probably ‘cause we never talked in school because I’ve always been like this. Hey, why did we never talk in school?”

Shunsui shrugged but his lowering eyes belied the attempt to pass his response as light-hearted.

“I was convinced someone like you would never bother himself with a guy like me, so I guess I just stayed away. We were in different classes, you played football and danced, I was barely scraping a passing grade in my art class even though that was the whole entire reason I enrolled in the school. It was not like I had any good reasons to talk to you, anyway except for the fact that my heart decided to jump all over inside my chest and then cycle right out of my mouth every time I looked at you.”

With every word that spilled past Shunsui’s lips, Juushiro felt his chest getting tighter and tighter. He was at a loss for words again, but he knew he couldn’t possibly let this silence stretch out for half as long as the previous one had. The curve of Shunsui’s mouth edged on pained and for a moment, Juushiro felt ashamed of the butterflies flitting around in his stomach.

He stroked the back of Shunsui’s long fingers with his own and Shunsui looked up at him with a sheepish smile, like he was embarrassed to have said as much as he had.

Juushiro didn’t appreciate that expression in the slightest.

On impulse, he lifted Shunsui’s knuckles to his lips and watched the man’s eyes widen even as his cheeks pinked again. Juushiro buried his smirk against the rough, brown skin and didn’t take his eyes away from Shunsui’s startled grey ones.

“If you’d have come up to me and said something, anything, I can see one of two things happening.”

Shunsui’s lips quirked up in amused curiosity, and just because he could, Juushiro brushed another kiss against his skin.

“Hmm? And what would those two things be?”

Juushiro smiled.

“Either I would have turned to see you and actually remembered myself and my surroundings and the most embarrassing thing I’d have done would be to blush up to my ears.”

Shunsui grinned

“Or?”

“Or I’d have been way less chill, tripped over my own two feet in my excitement, made us both tumble to the ground and then never stopped giggling like a hysterical little kid.”

Shunsui licked his lips and looked away, even as his chin trembled with suppressed laughter and Juushiro experienced a very particular urge to scratch the scruffy looking stubble.

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Of course, it does. Its like you’re constantly underestimating how smitten I am with you.”

Shunsui made an adorable little noise that started off as a groan but was bitten away while half on its way to becoming a giggle. Juushiro really wanted to kiss him.

“We need to stop throwing each other’s words back at each other.”

Juushiro hummed and pretended to consider the suggestion.

“Nope, it’s our thing. I think it’s cute.”

Shunsui raised a brow. Juushiro thought the sunlight was unfairly flattering on his golden skin, intensely aware of the fact that if they didn’t go back inside in the next few minutes, he, himself would be looking red as a ripe tomato.

“We have ‘our’ things now, huh?”

The fingers underneath Juushiro’s turned and curled around his palm and he bit back a curse as he felt his heartbeat quicken again.

“I mean, it’s only natural.”

Shunsui leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table between them.

“Well, romantic movies are going to be our thing too if I have anything to say about it. It’s a damn shame nobody introduced you to the good shit.”

“What?”, Juushiro gawked at Shunsui.

“Get up. You got the rest of the evening free, don’t ya?”

…

“He totally is going to develop a thing for her, I am calling it.”, Juushiro declared from his place next to Shunsui on the bright orange sofa that appeared more and more iconic the longer Juushiro looked at it. On the screen of Shunsui’s, indeed vintage, and indeed pricey, television, Mr. Darcy had just finished cribbing to Mr. Bingley about the lack of pretty women in the vicinity like a total straight man and Juushiro thought Darcy had to be at least partially blind to look at Kierra Knightley and not immediately fall to his knees.

Shunsui pursed his lips at Juushiro’s prediction but the slight fold between his brows gave it away that Juushiro was right.

Putting off gloating till he was given canonical evidence of his prediction being spot on, Juushiro turned his attention back to the screen. A minute later he said,

“Bingley looks like a baboon on coke. Jane should just date his sister instead.”

Shunsui snorted.

…

It was raining and Darcy was pouring his heart out and Elizabeth looked infuriated enough to slap him so hard it launched him right out of the Milky Way. It was as cliche a scene as imaginable, but Juushiro was at the literal edge of his seat, eyes glued to the screen in anticipation of the slap that, sadly, never came.

“Come on!”, Juushiro threw his hands up in an impassioned exclamation. “That fucking bastard is …-”

Whatever that fucking bastard was flew out of Juushiro’s mind the moment he sat back on the sofa and felt the very real, very warm presence of Shunsui next to him. Shunsui had scooted closer from the opposite end of the sofa, till their sides were flush against each other, and thrown his arm on to the backrest behind Juushiro.

Two realisations ran through Juushiro’s mind in quick succession, namely, his legs were longer than Shunsui’s and torso shorter, so that when they sat down Juushiro was the perfect height to be tucked under Shunsui’s shoulder and cuddled with, and secondly, Shunsui _wanted to cuddle with him_. 

He thought that was ridiculous. Shunsui had made it clear that he wanted to date him, and all of this was part of dating. Juushiro had dated before, he wasn’t a child, he wasn’t supposed to be feeling giddy over every single thing.

His face flamed, nevertheless, and when he turned he found Shunsui staring at him with a carefully impassive expression on his face.

“Is this okay?”, Shunsui questioned.

Juushiro nodded and leaned his head against Shunsui’s shoulder to emphasise his point.

He couldn’t bring himself to focus on the movie for the next ten minutes, or so.

…

Sometime in the middle of the movie, they realised it was time for dinner. Shunsui said he had leftover chicken korma in his fridge and they briefly contemplated making rice to go with it, till Shunsui decided he didn’t want to pause the movie for that amount of time.

Juushiro had finally realised how much his tall, muscular date loved this sappy little romantic movie and hidden his grin behind a hand, before he jumped up in excitement over his latest brain wave and suggested they order pizza.

Shunsui gazed at his childish grin in wonder for a couple of second before he reached for his phone.

“Big pizza lover?”, he questioned. 

Juushiro shrugged.

“I rarely get to eat greasy take out because of my diet and everything.”

Shunsui hummed.

“How about a Hawaiian?”

“I will murder you.”

…

“The first time I read Pride and Prejudice I was twelve and I hated it.”

“What made you give it a second chance?”, Juushiro questioned.

“I was fifteen and bored out of my mind in my Mexican grandmother’s house and the only book she had in English was Pride and Prejudice. I realised that day that the reason I hated it was because I didn’t understand the big words and the complicated themes of the novel. It seemed anti-climatic. I couldn’t appreciate it because it just wasn’t the right time to.”

“But then you got another chance and fell in love with Austen?”

Shunsui smiled and turned his eyes away from the screen. His arm left the backrest to cup Juushiro’s shoulder instead and the look he gave him was too charged with tenderness to be mistaken as anything other than the silent confession it was.

Juushiro felt a shiver start in the tips of his fingers and run down to the ends of his toes.

“Yep, and I am so glad for that second chance.”

Chest full and cheeks red, Juushiro leaned up and kissed Shunsui’s jaw.

“So am I.”

…

When the pizza arrived, Shunsui broke out the beer and with a can each, they watched the horrid Lady Catherine De Bourgh arrive to rudely interrogate Elizabeth in the dead of the night. 

“Okay,” Juushiro began, “but why does she remind me of Yamamoto patrolling the hallways in zero hour to make sure nobody was sneaking around and making out?” 

Shunsui snorted, derisively.

“Why, indeed, because Yamaji took issue with people fucking in school, not with people fucking in general.”

Juushiro hummed in agreement. “You have to admit though,” he continued, “the similarities don’t end at the white hair.”

“The gaudy dressing sense is one, I guess.”

“And the steadily pinking face. God, the first few times I saw him blow a fuse, I was honestly worried he was going to faint.”

“Bullshit! Yamaji doesn’t faint like us mere mortals, or shower for that matter because that awful stench is all I can focus on when he is around me.”

“You think this woman smells?” Juushiro nodded at the screen.

They chatted about a thousand such things till the pizza was gone and their cans were drained and Shunsui had to get up to grab more, and then those were empty too. They chatted about all the things that had changed at school since Juushiro left, about a show called _Sense 8_ that Shunsui could not get over, about how Shunsui believed pineapple on pizza didn’t taste half as bad as the internet claimed it did, about Juushiro’s sick grandmother and forever-pining-behind-a-woman-already-hers best friend Soi Fon. Shunsui laughed especially hard when Juushiro told him if she ever found out he told everyone they were best friends she’d literally murder him.

Time hadn’t stopped for them, of course, seconds ticking steadily away as their ‘quick-cup-of-coffee’ date had long since turned into a ‘spend-all-evening-with-you’ date, and yet every time Juushiro snuck a glance at the clock, Shunsui would launch into an impassioned speech about whatever was on his mind, subjects ranging from a comb he had bought last week that was stolen from his bag that very day to how he thought the only way to empower everyone without eradicating the entire economy was to combine elements of both socialism and capitalism.

Juushiro was starting to think Shunsui just didn’t want him to leave, and was also a little enchanted with the bright sparkle in his dark grey eyes that seemed to reach within and spread warmth to the very ends of his fingers and toes.

There, sitting back with their heads against the backrest of Shunsui’s ridiculously nice orange sofa, eyes running across the ceiling of his living room with no intent or purpose, they remained for what felt like hours Juushiro was endlessly grateful for and seconds he couldn’t seem to fit enough of into his heart, all at once. When Juushiro leaned his head against Shunsui’s, he felt the scratch of his stubble against his own smooth cheekbone, and both of them blushed so hard, they almost shot out of their seats and ran away screaming in embarrassment tinged with shades of fond excitement.

They didn’t move their heads away, however.

… not until Juushiro’s manager called.

He picked up the call and groaned down the line at Rukia.

“It’s ten in the fucking night and this is your first goddamn date. Have some shame, you hopeless man.”

Juushiro scoffed. What did she know? She hadn’t felt the way Shunsui’s arm tightened around his shoulders when he saw who was calling.

…

Juushiro grudgingly told Rukia to come over and was informed she had been parked outside the house since eight. Juushiro couldn’t decide if that was creepy or admirable.

_(He would be wondering what amount of protection 5’2 Rukia thought she could provide against his big bear of a date if he hadn’t known better.)_

_Kuchikis_ , he shook his head as he watched Shunsui fiddle with the door, _were a terrifying breed._

With a disappointed smile, Shunsui held the door open for him to pass through. Across the street Rukia’s posh, black, beast of a car seemed oddly out of place in Shunsui’s quiet, quaint neighbourhood.

Juushiro put his fingers to Shunsui’s jaw and mirrored his smile. Shunsui’s arms wrapped around his shoulder and gathered him into a hug.

Juushiro’s heart was racing just as fast as it had been earlier in the cafe, but he remembered to bundle Shunsui up in an embrace of his own, this time.

“Don’t be like this. We’ll see each other soon.” Juushiro whispered against Shunsui’s jaw, and placed a soft kiss on the prickly skin. Shunsui’s grip tightened around him.

“When?”

With another kiss, a little higher up, a lot closer to Shunsui’s ear, Juushiro reached forward and pulled Shunsui’s other hand off of the doorknob and guided it to go snug around his own waist. Shunsui squeezed him.

His ridiculous perfume had mostly worn off and this scent Juushiro couldn’t get enough of was Shunsui, musky and addictive in a manner wildly more powerful than the strongest of narcotics would ever seem to Juushiro.

“Whenever we’re both free next, even if it’s for fifteen minutes. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

“You better.”

When Juushiro stepped back, Shunsui kissed him.

It was soft, was Juushiro’s first thought. It made his toes curl in his shoes. His palms cupped Shunsui’s face, thumbs stroking his cheeks and chin. There wasn’t even a hint of passion in the kiss, not a trace of heat, but pure adoration and Juushiro found himself melting so completely that he had to lean his head against Shunsui’s shoulder for a full minute before he was able to regain the strength to walk across the street to the car. 

When he was finally inside, he exchanged the biggest, silliest grins in the world with Rukia who teasingly informed him Shunsui hadn’t gone inside and was waiting for them to leave.

Despite the blushing cheeks and the silly grin and the mocking laughter from Rukia, Juushiro rolled the window down and blew a kiss to Shunsui from across the street, who caught it and pressed it into his chest without a hint of amusement in his smitten grin.

He was ridiculous and Juushiro was _just a little_ in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment and let me know what you thought.
> 
> Come scream at me about Bleach on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/shamelessllamapeanutthing)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More fluff and some smut ^-^

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is why the rating is what it is.

Nearly six days after their first date, Shunsui was waiting outside the school building for Juushiro, who was supposed to pick him up for a quiet lunch date. There was a break between his lectures that day that fell right around the time Shunsui’s school got over and they had decided to go and check out a new Chinese restaurant nobody seemed to want to stop raving about.

Kenpachi, who had decided to keep him company that day for some weird reason, swung an arm across his shoulder. Shunsui nearly cringed at the overwhelming smell of cigarettes that always clung to Kenpachi no matter how long it had been since he last smoked. He didn’t stop himself from elbowing him away though. 

“Why are you even here?” he intoned. He loved his friends, all of them but they had a tendency to lose their bloody minds where Juushiro was concerned and he really wasn’t eager to find out how Kenpachi would behave when the guy was actually, physically there.

“I was stalking your boy last night, and I saw this picture he posted.” Kenpachi paused and leered at Shunsui only to have the artist roll his eyes at him. He grinned wider though, and licked his lips. 

“He was with his manager. And her brother. The dude looked like he had a full two-by-four up his ass and I have decided.” Shunsui raised his brows in sick curiosity. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know, even though he had a good idea where this was going.

“I have decided I am going to make him my bitch. You said he was complaining about his manager being sick and Byakuya filling in for her, didn’t you? So he’ll be here with him and I’ll make my move.” 

Kenpachi nodded to himself like all of this made complete sense and Shunsui made a conscious decision to throw this information right out of his brain and never think of it again.

He fished out his phone instead, and opened up his chat box with Juushiro.

_“Your lawyer is in mortal danger.”_

Juushiro’s reply came within second and Shunsui chuckled, then held it out for Kenpachi to read.

_“Good! Serves him right!”_

_“He’s been on my case constantly all morning! And over nothing!”_

_“I miss Rukia so muchhhhh.”_

_“What sort of an idiot abandons his own job to fill in for his sister at her’s?!” “This entire family is nuts.”_

_“I am scared for Renji, honestly.”_

Kenpachi, who hadn’t been regaled with tales of the Kuchiki Brand Of Ridiculousness and how Renji Needed To Cut His Losses And RUN, naturally couldn’t appreciate Juushiro’s frustration as much as Shunsui did, but he did derive a good old chuckle out of it.

Shunsui opened up his camera and snapped a quick selfie with his taller friend before sending it to Juushiro.

_“Think the dude will be into this mess?”_

Juushiro replied with a string of laughing emoticons and then asked,

_“His grin seems psychotic.”_

Shunsui snuck a quick glance at Kenpachi, who was now occupied with his own phone. He loved the man, truly did, but he had to be honest to Juushiro when he replied,

_“Yeah, he might be a little cuckoo.”_

_“Figures. Psychos attract psychos.”_

Shunsui howled.

When Juushiro’s car finally pulled up and he stepped out in all his crisp-shirt-and-fitted-jeans glory, Kenpachi was already rounding the vehicle to move to the driver’s window. As soon as Shunsui realised where that man was headed, he wrapped his fingers around Juushiro’s bicep and took off racing down the street.

“Wha- what!”, Juushiro protested, but his athlete’s legs had no trouble keeping up with Shunsui and within seconds they were shoulder to shoulder, rounding the school campus and heading to the bike sheds behind it, that Shunsui knew would be empty by then. Behind them Byakuya honked the car horns in a display of disapproval.

“Byakuya’s going to kill me!” Juushiro complained, but he didn’t stop running and there was a smile in his tone that sent Shunsui’s heart racing.

“Byakuya is going to kill the both of us if we stick around for Kenpachi to finish doing… whatever it is he is doing!”

Juushiro’s hand twisted in Shunsui’s grasp to stick their palms together as they continued on their mad dash, threading through the lingering students and giggling in embarrassment every time their eyes met.

As Shunsui had predicted, the sheds were empty of both bikes and students. Pulling to a halt, Shunsui placed a hand on his knee and waited to catch his breath. Next to him, Juushiro seemed nearly unfazed, save for light pants that made his chest rise and fall softly.

“Is your friend going to murder my lawyer?”

Shunsui straightened.

“He is going to drive him to commit suicide.”

“Well, who is going to drive us to the restaurant now?”

“We can walk. It’s close.”

Juushiro’s mouth pulled into a cute frown, and unable to resist the temptation, Shunsui stole a quick peck. Juushiro placed a hand around his neck but didn’t stop frowning. Instead, his eyes narrowed with a vaguely worried look and he bit his lip.

“No offence, but your friend really did look insane.”

Shunsui chuckled.

“One day, when they get over their hero-worship, I’ll introduce you to all of them and you’ll realise Kenpachi is the least problematic one of the bunch.”

Juushiro rolled his eyes and playfully shoved Shunsui away, only for Shunsui to grab his hands and pull him closer. Juushiro’s arms went around his waist and grabbed a teasing handful of his butt cheeks. Shunsui replied by bringing his hands to cup Juushiro’s face and tilt it forward into a soft kiss.

… which didn’t remain soft for long.

Snogging Juushiro, as Shunsui had quickly discovered, was always a fight against the inevitable. Juushiro had _mad skills_ in this department and often Shunsui would lose himself to the point that he would be a sighing, moaning mess of trembling limbs and pliant mouth under Juushiro’s touch. 

Keeping up with him seemed nearly impossible in the beginning because Juushiro was all fire and passion, coupled with a clever tongue and a flattering eagerness to his motions. Soon enough, Shunsui had realised Juushiro made love to him with every single touch of their lips together, wild and urgent on some occasions, slow and dizzying on others but always passionate, always fiery.

… and the best he could do was let Juushiro take complete control over him, let his scent seep down through his skin and into his bones and his touch incinerate all thoughts of lesser things from Shunsui’s mind. Shunsui had always been a very active lover, taking lead and setting the pace was almost natural to him. Juushiro however, somehow made it seem like sitting back and being ravished by the dancer was all Shunsui would ever need in life.

So, he opened his mouth wider and eagerly met Juushiro’s tongue with his own, dancing with it and suckling on it instead of trying to fight it for dominance. It was a lost battle, he knew. Ukitake Juushiro had brought Kyouraku Shunsui down on his knees the day they first met.

Shunsui rubbed soft circles on Juushiro’s cheeks and sighed into his mouth when he felt Juushiro’s slender fingers climb underneath his t-shirt to touch the sweat-damp skin of his back. He felt gentle pressure coaxing him closer, and he let Juushiro slide a leg between his.

When Shunsui had to pull apart for oxygen, Juushiro didn’t seem like he had nearly enough. Panting, he brought Shunsui’s lower lip into a short and wet kiss once, and then did the same to his upper lip, till Shunsui was grinning, palms flat against Juushiro’s shoulders to hold him back.

“As much,” he panted. “As much as I am enjoying this, we need to get lunch before your next lecture, Juu-chan.”

Juushiro rested his head on Shunsui’s shoulder and protested in a tone that sounded whiny enough to make Shunsui grin.

“But we don’t have a car! So we could just skip out. Stay here. I’ll grab a protein bar on my way back.”

“No can do. You didn’t have breakfast today morning, either.”

In the past few days Shunsui had also learned that despite his strict diet, Juushiro was _very_ careless with his health and nutrition. The only time he was excited about eating was when they were going to get something decidedly barred from his diet plan. Or candies. The man had a giant sweet tooth and it was the most endearing thing in the world.

When Shunsui had mentioned the same to Juushiro, Juushiro had laughed and shaken his head.

“You think every thing about me is the most endearing thing in the world.” he had said.

“Well, it is! I can’t possibly lie about it to spare your self-deprecating ways.” Shunsui had retorted.

…

Sitting across each other, Shunsui and Juushiro chatted about the most inane things they could think of. Inside the air conditioned restaurant, Juushiro had let down his hair from the high ponytail he usually wore it in and Shunsui had insisted on taking nearly a thousand pictures of him then.

Juushiro’s cheeks had coloured but one of them turned out so good, with his eyes bashfully averted and his hair gracefully sweeping across his shoulder, that Juushiro immediately demanded to be sent it so he could post it to his Instagram. After sending it to him, Shunsui had made it his home screen.

Presently, Shunsui marvelled at how easy it had become to talk to Juushiro in less than a week. It honestly felt like they had been dating for ages, friends for longer. Juushiro was a great listener and soaked up information like he was hungry for it and Shunsui, while usually a far lazier conversationalist, was always eager to learn more about Juushiro.

They had made time to meet thrice between this date and their first one, and texted day in and day out. Juushiro wasn’t always free to respond, but when his replies did come, they were long and enthusiastic and Shunsui hadn’t once, in real or virtual life, felt like he had to consider his thoughts or words too hard before expressing them to Juushiro.

“How soon is too soon to call someone your best friend?” Shunsui asked suddenly.

Juushiro’s eyes widened in surprise before a sweet, fond smile, climbed to his mouth.

“I am not sure but… in case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t following any rules or doing any of this ‘properly’ here.”

“Fair enough” Shunsui shrugged. “I think you’re my best friend.”

Juushiro placed his spoon down and brought up his hand to flick Shunsui’s forehead.

“I am honoured, thank you. It does feel like I have known you all my life.”

Shunsui lifted his glass of water in a mocking salute.

“We click.”

“Well, thank God for that, or I would have wasted nearly three years pining behind you for nothing, now.”

Shunsui laughed and nodded and then his world came to a standstill.

In front of him Juushiro watched realisation dawn on Shunsui’s face and went completely still, eyes blown wide in a panic and mouth seemingly open to spout a million explanations that he couldn’t seem to find.

Shunsui blinked.

“Three years?”

“Uh…” Colour was starting to return to Juushiro’s face and it was a wicked, wicked red.

“Three years.”

Shunsui couldn’t help the huge grin spreading across his face as he watched Juushiro fumble and flail, even though his head and heart were in turmoil. Juushiro had been pining behind _him_ for _three years._

There was no universe in which that made any amount of sense whatsoever.

“I had a _tiny_ , very tiny crush on you when I was in Junior year and it just… never died… clearly, since I am here now.” Juushiro mumbled.

Shunsui’s heart raced even as he struggled to fully to grasp what Juushiro was saying. It was still unbelievable to him, and he was pretty sure he had just gone into shock.

Juushiro on the other hand, had taken to rambling, wavy hand gestures combined.

“I really was hoping to tell you this more… romantically. And like, not like this, not today. We’ve barely been going out yet, and we aren’t even official and _like, it’s only been a week!_ We haven’t even had sex yet!”

Voice weak because he was still feeling completely dazed, Shunsui offered,

“Well, I could solve that last problem for you if you want.”

“Well, of course I want!” Juushiro glared, unmindful of the fact that his words had very nearly slaughtered Shunsui’s entire existence. “But you know that’s not what I meant!”

Taking a sip of his water, Shunsui tried to regain control of the situation. A teeny, tiny, easily negligible part of his brain had started celebrating this new-found information now.

“For what it’s worth,” He finally managed, by which point Juushiro had started looking like somebody had punched him in the face. “It means more to me than you could ever believe and I am glad I got to know, Juu-chan.”

Juushiro gulped and lifted a hand to stroke the side of his neck. His fingers swept an inch or two of his shirt away and Shunsui licked his lips at the sharply angled collarbone this revealed.

Sighing at Juushiro’s growing distress, Shunsui leaned forward and placed his hand atop where Juushiro’s own sat, bunched into a tight fist.

“I am so glad I got a chance with you again. It was so unlikely and yet…” he trailed off, as it hit him once again how incredibly lucky he had been.

…

A few minutes later, their bills settled and their shoulders tense with nerves, Shunsui and Juushiro strolled along the pavement, steps heading lazily in a direction opposite to Juushiro’s university…

… and towards Shunsui’s house.

Neither of them said a word about the lecture Juushiro was clearly planning to skip. They didn’t hold hands, they didn’t touch and Shunsui was at a complete loss as to how to make things stop being so awkward between them.

At some point Shunsui bit the bullet and grabbed Juushiro’s hand anyway and it turned out to be the right move, for the dancer considerably relaxed. Shooting each other a tiny smile, they continued walking. When their palms started sweating, Shunsui simply looped his arm around Juushiro’s instead.

Right outside Shunsui’s doorstep, Juushiro’s phone started ringing. He fished it out and immediately groaned, bangs blowing away from his face when he gave a theatrically exaggerated sigh.

“Is it Byakuya?”

Juushiro rolled his eyes as an answer and Shunsui returned to struggling with his door. It always got a little stuck and would take a few firm pushes to be dislodged from the frame.

“Yeah, don’t worry about that.” Juushiro spoke down the phone behind his back. “Shunsui drove me to college. What? Of course he has a car.”

Shunsui scoffed and shook his head, finally succeeding in opening the door and holding it for Juushiro to pass through.

The dancer pecked his cheek on his way in and Shunsui smacked his butt in retaliation.

“Yeah, its fine. He’ll drive me to the academy too.” Juushiro gracefully pirouetted and stuck his tongue out at Shunsui when he raised his brows. “I told you, its fine. Just pick me up from ballet at 8, okay?”

Shunsui closed the door behind him, and leaned his back against it watching Juushiro pace around his living room as he made excuses to Byakuya, expression a lot lighter than minutes ago. 

At least, this call had managed to relieve some of the tension in the air.

“Byakuya, hang up. No, seriously, my lecture is about to start.” Juushiro paused. “Yeah. Bye. BYE!”

Heaving a mighty sigh of exasperation, Juushiro finally placed his phone face down on Shunsui’s console, before turning to the artist, who had yet to unstick himself from the door.

“This is why I like Rukia.” Juushiro muttered, as he stalked closer to Shunsui. “She’d have gotten the point by now.”

Shunsui’s watched Juushiro stalk closer and held his arms open, wrapping them snug around the dancer when he stepped into his embrace.

“What point?” He questioned against the man’s forehead and held back the embarrassing rumble rising up in his throat when he felt Juushiro wiggle some till their chests were pressed tight together and Juushiro’s head was resting in the crook of Shunsui’s neck.

“That I am not leaving your side, today.”

They stood in silence for longer than Shunsui cared to admit, just listening to each other breathe in the dead silence of the house. The lights hadn’t been switched on and the curtained windows barely let in any light. It would soon be getting stuffy, given the fact that they hadn’t even switched on the air conditioning yet but for now, they were perfectly content to stay entwined together, eyes closed and minds foggy with each other’s scents.

“How soon is too soon to ask someone to make love to you?”

Shunsui nearly choked, eyes running a very real risk of popping right out of their sockets. Keeping himself from yapping out excited gibberish was a struggle and when seventeen-seconds later, his brain still hadn’t come up with a good response he decided to stick to _their thing._

“I am not sure but in case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t following any rules or doing any of this ‘properly’ here.”

To his surprise, Juushiro didn’t so much as crack a smile when he lifted his head to face Shunsui again, eyes serious when he trailed kissed up the artist’s chin prickly with barely-there stubble.

“Or maybe we are, maybe this _is_ what’s proper for us. It feels right to me, at least.”

Juushiro’s fingers threaded together behind Shunsui’s neck and Shunsui tilted his head to the side to indicate where he wanted Juushiro’s lips next. Taking the hit, Juushiro was immediately kissing up the shell of Shunsui’s ear next, taking the lobe in his mouth and giving it a wet, hard suck before whispering,

“ _You_ feel right to me.”

Juushiro’s mouth returned to its mission of slaying Shunsui with wet, kittenish kisses and Shunsui felt a gasp tear out of him, less because of his partner’s gentle attentions, and more because of the these deadly words Juushiro was throwing around carelessly, making every single nerve-ending in Shunsui’s body come alive with need.

“Juu-… Juu-chan,” he felt a shudder run down his back when Juushiro nuzzled into the side of his neck. “You have _no fucking idea_ what you do to me when you talk like this. Or back there in the restaurant. I am so… I don’t know how to put it in words.”

Immediately, Juushiro’s body was pulling away from his and Shunsui flailed, mouth falling open in protests that died down on his tongue when he saw what Juushiro was up to.

“Don’t bother.” He breathed out, voice whisper-soft and hungry, as his fingers finished unbuttoning his shirt, letting it fall down his arms and flutter to the ground, revealing his toned, muscled dancer’s torso. “Words are overrated little buggers, anyway.”

Shunsui watched, eyes wide and mouth agape as Juushiro smirked, trailing one hand down to the fly of his jeans, other stroking his chest and pinching his dusty pink nipple. When he finally managed to undo his button and zipper, he pushed both his jeans and underwear out of the way together, tugging them down his curvy hips and wide thighs, letting it crowd around his ankles.

Shunsui’s eyes were trailing over Juushiro’s body before his brain even caught up with the fact that Ukitake Juushiro was standing butt naked in his living room, his gorgeous, half-hard cock curving up towards his belly. His long, white hair, gathered to the front on one side, tumbled gracefully down his bony shoulder and his mouth arched into a delicious smirk Shunsui couldn’t stop himself from wanting to taste.

On shaky legs, Shunsui advanced towards Juushiro. Something inside him was urgently trying to tell him to slap himself in order to check if any of this was real. The better part of his brain though, thankfully overpowered that urge and when his hand lifted, it came to rest around Juushiro’s cock instead.

Juushiro sighed, as he watched Shunsui gave him two lazy tugs up and down his shaft.

“God, you’re gorgeous.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, it was as if his body had developed a mind of its own, for he was surging forward, folding his arms under Juushiro’s butt and lifting him into the air before Juushiro could understand what was happening. Almost instinctively, he brought his legs to wrap around Shunsui’s waist even as he yelped in fright.

As soon as what was happening sank in though, Juushiro was giggling and wrapping his arms around Shunsui’s broad shoulders, trailing his fingers down his back and neck. Shunsui smirked and peppered kisses along the patch of skin in front of his mouth, as he walked over to his bedroom, hands itching to grope the firm butt resting atop his arms.

Once inside, Shunsui wasted no time stumbling over to his bed and throwing Juushiro down on top of it. Before Juushiro could balance himself on his elbows, Shunsui was grabbing his ankles and pulling him down. With a firm grasp around Juushiro’s hips, he flipped the dancer over, taking a minute to climb up his body and nip his shoulder in soft apology at Juushiro’s indignant squawk.

Shunsui’s hands cupped Juushiro’s ass cheeks together as he trailed wet, noisy kisses down Juushiro’s spine. The dancer gave a low moan when he reached the small of his back and Shunsui’s fingers dug into the supple flesh of his butt before he started nibbling down Juushiro’s smooth, firm skin.

“Oh my god!” Juushiro groaned into the cradle of his arms and Shunsui allowed himself a hearty chuckle at his embarrassment laced tone.

“It’s your own fault.” Shunsui muttered as he lovingly licked a wet stripe up the reddening skin under Juushiro’s butt that he had just ravaged with his teeth.

“What was that out there? I nearly had a heart attack.”

“It was worth the look on your face.”

Bringing in his knees, Shunsui nudged Juushiro till he got the hint and flipped himself over again. Immediately, Shunsui’s body lowered atop his, his big, warm hand already working on Juushiro’s cock between their stomachs as they kissed.

Juushiro moaned into his mouth, his cock twitching in Shunsui’s grasp when the artist pressed a thumb down the head of it, rubbing along the slit. Shunsui slipped his tongue into the wet heat of Juushiro’s mouth, enjoying plundering it as for once, Juushiro was too stunned to fight him over it.

Shunsui’s tongue slowly drew out his and they met and twined together in shy tandem for a second before Juushiro was surging up, ready to take back control. Shunsui smirked and bit down on Juushiro’s lip.

In retaliation, Juushiro parted his legs wider, making Shunsui’s hips slot more firmly against his. The rough drag of Juushiro’s cock and his own hand even from on top of his jeans was enough to draw a breathy sigh out of him.

“Shunsui, I need you, now.” Juushiro whispered along Shunsui’s neck as his hands dipped into the waistband of Shunsui’s jeans, fingers singing over his hips. Shunsui’s cock gave an interested twitch from inside his boxers and he tore his mouth away from Juushiro’s skin.

“Do you want to or should I?”

Their eyes met and Shunsui forgot to breathe for a good few seconds, then even as their hips rutted against each other. With a sweaty hand, he smoothed Juushiro’s bangs off of his forehead and dropped a soft kiss into the damp skin there. 

“I want to feel you inside me, today.” Juushiro whispered. “Oh, and uh, could you keep your clothes on?”

Shunsui breathed out a giddy little laugh that he smothered in Juushiro’s hair.

Juushiro blushed.

“It’s hot, okay!”

“You’re hot.”

“You’re cheesy.”

“And you’re still naked in my bed.”

Juushiro hit Shunsui’s chest with a bunched fist in response.

It was a struggle to pull himself away from the tempting feast spread out on his bed, and the fact that he managed was easily falling into the category of a miracle. Juushiro groaned but remained where he was, watching Shunsui walk over to the other side of the bed with half-lidded eyes.

Hastily tearing his bedside table’s drawer open Shunsui pawed around for lube and his box of condoms. When he found them, he threw them on to the bed next to Juushiro.

“XL?” Juushiro read off the box with a raised brow and gave Shunsui’s crotch a mockingly impressed glance as he walked over. Shunsui rolled his eyes, cheeks suddenly feeling warm and tore the box out of Juushiro’s grasp.

“Come here.” He mumbled before dragging Juushiro’s mouth back on to his. Giving his a deep, lingering kiss, his lips trailed across his cheek to mouth and suckle at his ear lobe before dipping behind to suck a huge hickey onto the soft skin there. Juushiro moaned, his fingers tugging Shunsui’s hair free of its low ponytail.

Immediately, his fingers were threading through his hair and massaging his scalp, trailing down to stroke his hairline at times. Shunsui hummed in pleasure before pulling himself lower along his partner’s body, across his collarbones, down his pecs and his taut stomach.

Pouring lube into his palm, Shunsui let it warm for a few seconds before slicking up his fingers and working one into Juushiro just as he took his cock into his mouth, slurping pre cum from around the head and teasing the shaft with his tongue, making Juushiro’s shoulders shoot up and his fingers tighten in Shunsui’s hair. Shunsui sucked him off as he worked his hole open, pacing himself according to the pressure in Juushiro’s sighs. When he felt Juushiro was ready for another, he moved low to kiss down the nerves underneath his cock and suck on his balls, all the while easing his second finger inside.

“Oh god. I want it _right now, Shunsui.”_

Unable to resist anymore, Shunsui’s free hand scrambled to undo his zip and pull out his own dick, standing straight and leaking pre cum in his boxers. Giving it a few hard tugs to calm himself down, he returned his focus to the skin underneath his tongue, licking and nipping to his heart’s content.

“Shunsui, _fuck_ , hurry up!”

Juushiro’s near-scream went straight to Shunsui’s dick, making the older man groan. His fingers shivered whether they grasped Juushiro’s thighs, digging hard enough to bruise it just as badly as he’d done with the man’s butt. Juushiro groaned.

“Give it to me, fuck! I am not a doll! I won’t break!” 

With a lengthy, filthy curse, Shunsui straightened from where he was kneeling at the foot of the bed. Giving Juushiro’s cock one last kiss, he tore open a condom and rolled it on to himself, then grabbed the bottle of lube and dribbled a generous amount down his own cock, watching some drip down to the floor. Laying back on the bed, Juushiro panted and grinned lazily up at him. Shunsui blew him a kiss which made him break into giggles.

Juushiro’s eyes trailed down to Shunsui’s cock, and he whistled softly… and there the warmth came rushing back to Shunsui’s cheeks.

Grin widening, Juushiro wiggled his hips down closer to Shunsui’s crotch.

“Come here, big guy.”

Lining himself with Juushiro’s pink, winking hole, Shunsui plunged in with a half-bitten curse.

_“Shhhit!”_

Juushiro moaned loud and filthy the moment Shunsui entered him and Shunsui’s hands came to find his, interlacing their fingers together as Shunsui began to drive in with slow, shallow thrusts into the tight, hot opening. Their palms slid against each other, slick with sweat in the overheated room and with every thrust Juushiro’s expression became more and more thirsty, teeth biting into his lower lip and eyes only half-open.

From this angle Shunsui could learn to appreciate this particular kink of Juushiro’s because his form, naked and vulnerable, writhing on Shunsui’s cock under Shunsui’s properly clothed was the most appealing thing Shunsui had ever seen in his life.

His pace increased by itself, insides tightening as the pressure started building, every plunge into Juushiro’s ass dragging him closer to the climax. The spicy moans and sighs Juushiro was making absolutely no attempt to bite back were making him shiver in pleasure and his breath stuttered in his chest.

Juushiro’s head craned back, throat arching delightfully and unable to resist, Shunsui reached forward to bite down on it, hips still driving into Juushiro while Juushiro’s leaking cock remained pressed between both of their bodies.

“Holy shit.” Juushiro moaned as Shunsui’s teeth dug in. “Your clothes feel so, so good on my dick.”

Shunsui licked up the marks his teeth had just made and moved on to another spot to bite Juushiro in. His hips picked up pace, slamming into Juushiro with an increased fervour and revelling in the higher pitch of the dancer’s moans. Shunsui’s fingers came to pinch on Juushiro’s nipples, while his other hand thumbed along his lips, his ears, his jaw and whatever other part of Juushiro it could reach as he listened to the slight break in Juushiro’s voice get wider. His shoulders trembled and his hole tightened around Shunsui’s shaft and soon enough, Shunsui could feel a wet spot grow on the fabric of his t-shirt.

“Did you just cum untouched?” He marvelled.

Juushiro gave him a mock-irritated glare.

“Because both of our bodies rubbing all over my dick just don’t exist.” He intoned.

Shunsui laughed, and then hissed as Juushiro tightened around his shaft again. With Jushiro having already cum, he didn’t necessarily need to work to hold back. Pulling his knees under himself and pulling Juushiro’s hips forward to meet his, he started thrusting deeper into his ass, taking care to keep an ear out for any sign of pain or discomfort in Juushiro’s significantly lower but still very present moans.

Abandoning all inhibitions, Shunsui began thrusting harder, faster, chasing his orgasm in the plush heat inside of him. His thighs trembled and his knees buckled at one point, and he had to place his palm down on the bed to steady himself as he pulled back, nearly out of Juushiro before slamming back into him with all he had making Juushiro hiss in pleasure.

When his orgasm rolled over him, he was unable to hold himself up and collapsed on top of Juushiro, his body shivering with the force of the sensations rolling over him.

…

Nearly fifteen minutes later, they were still in bed, cleaned and clothed now but just as close as earlier.

“I- uh…”, Shunsui began “I couldn’t um, _find the spot_ and…”

Before he could make a bigger fool out of himself (not that he had any qualms admitting that he had been unable to pleasure Juushiro as much as he could, it was just the admission of it that was awkward) the dancer interrupted him.

“We did it for the first time. You weren’t going to find my prostate, be real now.”

Shunsui remained quiet, and snuggled further into Juushiro’s chest.

“Plus, I rushed you, and I came so quickly! Why are you feeling sorry when I came so quickly? Performance anxiety much, big guy?”

“Its like every time I imagined us doing this, and I imagined it a _lot_ , I was like a complete sex god and you were left awed but I got so excited with what you’d said before and how you _looked_ that I just…”

“Are you crazy? This was pretty damn good for our first time together. There are things you discover about your partner’s body only with time together, and unless you’ve other ideas… we have time.”

Shunsui’s heart went into overdrive, thundering around faster and louder than it had the entire time they’d been having sex and it was really funny how Juushiro could turn him into living, breathing mush with just a few words even after everything they had just done to each other.

He wrapped his arms tighter around Juushiro’s torso, digging his chin into the man’s chest to look up into his deep, brown eyes.

“Yeah, yeah you’re right. We’ve all the time in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment and let me know what you thought.
> 
> Come scream at me about Bleach on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/shamelessllamapeanutthing)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Domestic fluff that was promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are literally a single chapter away from the conclusion, yoohoo bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Uhm, unedited. Gomen.

(They did not in fact get any time at all in the next few days.)

There were only two days left for Shunsui’s prom, and Juushiro was pacing across his living room at 1 in the night, chewing on a thumbnail scarily close to bleeding.

After that amazing, _amazing_ day, Juushiro had found his schedule flooded with work. Initially, he had a sneaking suspicion a certain black-haired lawyer was taking revenge on him for abandoning him with Shunsui’s scary friend that day, but that was quieted when Rukia told him Byakuya had actually taken the guy home and had loud enough sex that Rukia had to crash at a friend’s to be able to sleep.

The raging blush on her cheeks as she said that made it clear this ‘friend’ of hers happened to be her brother’s assistant.

Point was, Juushiro was actually, genuinely busy and while Shunsui had been understanding enough, making peace with distracted texting and literally no actual face-to-face interaction, Shunsui had texted Juushiro about an hour ago that they ‘needed to talk’ and that it’d be great if Juushiro could ‘wait for Shunsui’s call before crashing for the night’.

Ever since, Juushiro’s brain has been racing in hundreds of different directions, none of them particularly pleasant. Had Shunsui gotten annoyed? Had he found another date after all?

Logically, he knew none of that was true. That he was simply being overly anxious and it was probably something small. Knowing Shunsui, he might as well be calling to have phone sex after all.

They had done that the night after their first time together. Juushiro’s hand hadn’t ever felt that good on his cock before.

So, really, it could be literally anything other than the various reasons Juushiro was coming up with for Shunsui to break up with him over.

… which was assuming there was something to break, given everything had happened so fast and they hadn’t given a name to whatever was between them. They were _technically_ dating but that wasn’t the same as an actual relationship, that was easy to abandon and break off and _fuck,_ Juushiro rubbed his eyes and forced himself to sit down on the couch instead of attempting to worry a hole into his apartment floor.

Running his fingers through his hair, he picked up his phone again, watching the blank notification bar with wide eyes. Shunsui had told him he might get a little late, and whatever sleepiness Juushiro had been suffering from when he got home had been easily driven away by that text anyway. His limbs felt heavy, and he knew his body was exhausted, but Juushiro was wide awake, nerves nearly thrumming in anticipation of Shunsui’s phone call. 

When the phone finally began ringing, Juushiro jumped despite the fact that his eyes had been trained on the phone all this time.

He was too fucking keyed up.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he forced his back to relax against the couch as he accepted the call.

“Hello?”

By the time Shunsui’s smooth voice reached his ears in response he had shot to his feet again.

“I hope you weren’t too sleepy or anything,” Shunsui was saying, and Juushiro couldn’t explain why his mind was spinning. “Man, was it a fucking tiring day today. School was hell. How was practice?”

Juushiro blinked once and then again.

“No, yeah, I no- I wasn’t sleepy. And practice was fine. It sucks about your school though. They can really drain you some days. Uhh, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

The few seconds of silence on the other end seemed absolute and unending. Juushiro couldn’t even make out the _whirr_ of Shunsui’s noisy air conditioner in the background.

“Are you okay, Juu-chan?” Shunsui questioned tentatively. The quiver in his voice had Juushiro’s fist tightening around his cell phone.

“Yeah, I am absolutely fine. Was it something urgent?”

Shunsui didn’t pause this time and his voice lilted in a manner too carefully carefree for Juushiro to not pick up on the undercurrent of tension.

“Can’t I call you just to talk to you?”

Juushiro’s brain fast forwarded through the realisation and skipped Stage 2: Relief, bombarding straight into the category of irritation.

“Oh my fucking god, you idiot!”

“ _Why_ am I an idiot?” Shunsui’s tone became very nearly whiny and then pulled a half-bitten laugh from Juushiro that he disguised as a cough.

“You told me we needed to talk!”

“Don’t we?” Juushiro could almost imagine Shunsui shooting to his feet as his voice rose. “We’ve barely talked in so long and I just thought if I could get like fifteen minutes of your time that’d be enough!”

“I get that, and I missed you too, you dolt. Did you have to phrase it like that, though? We need to talk? Seriously?”

Juushiro barely caught himself imitating Shunsui’s lazy drawl as he said that.

“What’s so wrong with ‘we need to talk’? We did need to talk!”

“I can’t believe you. Shunsui, ‘we need to talk’ is like code for ‘you’re not going to like what I have to say a single bit’. It’s dating language, like how ‘it’s not you’ means, it is you.”

“Do _not_ quote Friends at me.”

“You don’t fucking get it! I thought you were going to break up with me!”

“Baby…” Shunsui sighed down the line. He had never called Juushiro that before, nearly every other name in the book but never that. It made Juushiro feel small in all the right ways, like he could fit inside Shunsui’s heart and stay there forever, safe and belonging solely to Shunsui. It was a peculiar feeling but Juushiro confessed to himself that he didn’t really dislike it.

“This is not how I was planning for this to go, but… open your door.”

With his heart thundering so loud he felt like he had coughed it up to lay atop his palm, Juushiro staggered over to the door, hand clutching his phone over the film of sweat that he didn’t realise had formed there. When he opened the door, and Shunsui’s worried eyes met his, he nearly collapsed.

Shunsui opened his mouth to say something, but Juushiro had already pulled him inside and slammed his back against the door, stealing the surprised gasp from Shunsui’s lips with his own. His arm went around Shunsui’s shoulders, the other around his waist as he cradled Shunsui into himself, kissing him with a soft, feverish passion.

Shunsui leaned his head against the wall and let Juushiro have his way with him.

After a few minutes of such desperately sweet kissing, when both of them were having trouble breathing, was when Juushiro pulled back. Shunsui remained leaning heavily against the wall, hands hanging around Juushiro’s neck and wrecked grey eyes watching the dancer from under half-lowered lids. His mouth parted in soundless gasps and when he smiled it was an uncharacteristically shy little thing.

“Hey there, ladykiller.”

Juushiro laughed because it was corny and stupid and cute and it warmed his core like he doubted Shunsui had imagined it would.

Fifteen minutes and a glass of coke each later, they were sprawled across Juushiro’s king-sized bed, limbs tangled together in the dark. Shunsui’s head was resting on Juushiro’s shoulder, his soft exhales tickling the sensitive skin to the side of Juushiro’s neck. City lights cut across the room in a single beam reaching through the gap in the curtains, illuminating their ankles and toes as they lay in each others’ arms, pleasantly tired in a way that being curled up together was more gratifying than any amount of sleep could be.

“I missed you.” Shunsui mumbled.

“That much is pretty obvious.”

“I am staying the night. I brought a change of clothes.”

“I will murder you if you ask me to set an early morning alarm so you can get to school on time.”

Juushiro felt Shunsui’s lips curling against his skin before he heard his cute, little snicker.

“6:30”

Juushiro pinched his side…

… and then he set the alarm. 

…

Considering how late they went to sleep, Shunsui woke Juushiro up obscenely early, but he did it with soft kisses and slow drags of his hips against Juushiro’s, so Juushiro’s groggy growl of complaint sounded more like a groggy moan of encouragement instead. 

“Good morning, Juu-chan.”

Juushiro’s head fell back, his chest heaving under the feather light touch of Shunsui’s puckered lips as their morning woods rubbed together through the fabric of their underwear. Shunsui’s hands cupped Juushiro’s neck, sliding in and out of his hair and down his shoulders.

At some point, Shunsui’s stubbled chin brushed against Juushiro’s nipple and Juushiro gasped, voice low and croaky with sleep. He was nowhere near fully awake, still swimming in and out of awareness when he came inside his boxers like a teenager in middle school. He groaned in complaint when he felt Shunsui’s body move away from his but by the time Shunsui pulled Juushiro’s boxers down to clean up the mess inside, he had already fallen back asleep.

…

Juushiro woke up nearly an hour later to the smell of coffee while butt naked. It took him a second to remember everything that had happened since last night, and once he did, he found himself blushing and rolling across the bed like an idiot because that was just how smitten he was.

Gathering himself after a few minutes of squealing, he pulled on sweatpants and a shirt, popping a couple of mints in his mouth, which seemed redundant given how much of their morning breath they had shared earlier, and spraying a dash of his mildest perfume, before he stepped out of the room.

He found Shunsui in the kitchen, with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand and eyes on his phone screen. He didn’t even flinch when Juushiro plastered himself against his back, only tilting his neck to give Juushiro space to burrow his face into.

“Good morning” Juushiro kissed up the side of his throat and Shunsui hummed.

“Took over an hour to respond, I see. What a stuck up celebrity.”

Juushiro chuckled and tightened his hold around Shunsui.

“I, uh, ordered pancakes.” His hand flew out in a vague gesture towards a paper bag resting on the kitchen counter that Juushiro had not noticed before. “Because I didn’t know where you kept what and I wanted to wake you up with breakfast. I made coffee though.”

Softly, Shunsui extricated himself from Juushiro’s arms, going off in search of a mug as the dancer watched, a giddy smile on his face at the image of Shunsui so comfortable in Juushiro’s space, moving about his flat, waking up with him, and making breakfast for him. The rush of warmth in his chest almost seemed too tumultuous to contain.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Shunsui questioned when he turned around with a mug in his hand, clearly having made himself familiar with Juushiro’s space that morning. His smile seemed just as silly, wide and crooked in the corners, a faint gap between both of his lips, revealing a sliver of white.

“What is?”

“It looks happy.”

With Shunsui within his reach now, Juushiro grabbed the artist’s hand and pulled him back into a hug, making Shunsui stagger forward and place a hand on the counter beside Juushiro’s hip for support.

“You make me happy.”

Shunsui chuckled.

“Shit man, wasn’t I supposed to be the sappy one?”

…

Rukia dropped Shunsui to school before driving Juushiro to college that morning, with a shit-eating grin on her face the entire way.

“What?”, Juushiro asked when it became too much to bear.

“He was at your place all night.”

Rukia wiggled her brows.

“He was.”

“And?” She questioned, way above giggling like a toddler but obviously struggling with the urge just then.

“We didn’t fuck last night, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Rukia’s face immediately fell, smirk lapsing into a flat, and wholly too disapproving line.

“That didn’t happen until this morning.”

“I hope you took a shower before getting into my car, freak.”

Juushiro faux-scowled, eyes twinkling in amusement just like Rukia’s.

…

It was crazy how the honeymoon phase of a relationship always made the world just a tiny bit easier to deal with.

College, then yoga, then ballet practice, and Juushiro didn’t find the smile on his face dimming. Soi Fon called him a ‘fucking creep’ but she also asked forShunsui’s Instagram handle so she could stalk him and Juushiro knew that was as much of a seal of approval as he would gain from his best friend because his ‘do you want to meet him?’ was met with a look so uninterested he shushed himself out of embarrassment.

Soi Fon let him talk her ear off about Shunsui though, and about how funny he was, and how kind his eyes looked, and how good he was in bed so he figured she wasn’t actually bored, just… being Soi Fon _._

He returned home with a wide smile on his face, already FaceTiming Shunsui before he was even properly inside his flat. The artist’s face was smeared with green paint when he accepted the call.

“Hey…” Juushiro hesitated, but then reminded himself of how nice the nickname made him feel and soldiered on. “baby.”

Shunsui raised a brow, and bit the inside of his cheek.

“That’s a nice one. What’s up?”

“I was wondering, do you have time to go tuxedo shopping tomorrow?”

…

It wasn’t as easy or romantic as Juushiro had thought it would be because Shunsui, it turned out, was a very picky buyer.

“Those grey suits were perfect.” Juushiro whined.

“They were washing you out.”

_“What?!”_

Shunsui didn’t bother to respond, dragging Juushiro down another aisle, nearly three and a half hours after they started their shopping spree.

After fussing with the black suit jacket that had caught his eye across the store for several minutes, Shunsui promptly rejected that as well, making Juushiro scowl and shake his head in dismay. That looked like a perfectly decent piece to him.

“Okay, listen” he dug his heels in refusing to walk further into the store, especially since they had combed through the racks thrice already. He wrapped his arms around Shunsui’s, holding the man hostage until he stopped to listen to him. “Let’s go to my tailor instead.”

“Out of my budget.” Shunsui dismissed the idea.

“Yeah, well, your fussing is out of mine. I am paying, just come on.”

Shunsui shrugged and said something about how it was against his values to reject free shit, following Juushiro out of the store.

Convincing Juushiro’s tailor to put their suits on priority basis wasn’t difficult, what was difficult was getting Shunsui to pick one out of the three shades of blue fabric that he couldn’t seem to decide amongst.

Then he declared a cravat instead of a bow tie, and finding the _right_ shade of purple to suit both his cravat and Juushiro’s neck tie was another struggle that had Juushiro’s head spinning.

By the time they were done and their measurements were taken, the tailors seemed to be glad to be rid of Shunsui.

Once done, they drove off to Shunsui’s to drop him off. Juushiro held the door open, still pouting.

“You are so irritating.” He bit at Shunsui, right at his doorstep and Shunsui, with his usual indulgent mood restored after the suit business was sorted, simply smiled and dragged Juushiro into a kiss.

“I am sorry, but I want everything to be perfect. You deserve it.”

Juushiro felt his cheeks heating up.

“Yeah, well, I was so bored.”

Shunsui’s lips suckled on Juushiro’s before pulling apart with a soft _plop_ that had Juushiro’s blush darkening.

“My bad. I can think of a number of ways to entertain you now, if you’d give me a chance.”

Reaching forward to kiss Shunsui’s smirk, Juushiro grinned. He wasn’t exactly mad at Shunsui to begin with, anyways.

Turning around, he waved at Rukia, signalling he would be a while from across the road. Rukia grinned and gave a mock salute before driving off, and finally, Juushiro allowed himself to be dragged inside by his boyfriend.

His boyfriend.

Those two words sounded sweeter now than they ever had before.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AND WE'RE AT THE END
> 
> A dose of fluff, and some serious discussions about the future that I felt were due.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to everyone who has hung around with me throughout the completion of this fic! It means more to me than I can possibly put into words. All of your comments and kudos mean more to me than I can possibly put into words. I am so glad y'all decided to give this a chance and then stuck around with me!
> 
> This is the first multi-chapter fic I have ever completed! Yayyy me!

There was not a sight in the world more beautiful than Ukitake Juushiro in an Oxford blue tuxedo, with his hair tied up in a sleek, high ponytail and a soft, warm blush on his cheeks.

Then, he smiled at Shunsui and offered him his arm, and Shunsui nearly turned to a puddle of blushing, stuttering goo right there on the spot.

He managed to retain enough senses to thread his arm through Shunsui’s before losing it and laying a huge, wet smooch on his lips.

“You look gorgeous. You look like the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.” He mumbled.

Juushiro blushed more and Shunsui couldn’t resist stealing another peck from him.

“Shall we?”, Juushiro asked, like a proper gentleman and Shunsui allowed himself to be lead to the door of the passenger seat. Juushiro held it open for him. He climbed in and buckled his seat belt, pressing a quick peck to Juushiro’s cheek once he was inside, himself and done sticking his keys into the ignition.

“You really can’t keep your hands off of me today, can you?” Juushiro noted, chuckling.

“Well, you’re looking gorgeous. Did I tell you that?”

Juushiro laughed.

“I thought Rukia would be driving us.” Shunsui said, only for Juushiro to raise a brow.

“Are you stupid? Not today.” And then, a little softer, he mumbled, “I wanted to drive you, today.” 

“Aw, you’re such a sappy, little romantic, Juu-chan!” Shunsui crowed.

“Do you want me to swerve into a lamp post?”

…

Walking into a room filled with teenagers, with the most gorgeous person any of them have ever seen on your arm, ought to be an incomparable experience for any teenager. 

… and incomparable it was, incomparably nerve-wracking.

Shunsui had been excited all this time, and yet, standing at the doors of that hall with Juushiro beside him, after having been given so much more than he ever asked for in that tweet, Shunsui felt… strangely, small.

Like he didn’t deserve any of this.

Juushiro was a beautiful, rich, ballet prodigy, claimed to be the best their state had ever produced (which Shunsui wholeheartedly agreed with) and Shunsui was no one compared to that. He didn’t know what along the way from his house to the school had made him regress into Sophomore Shunsui who used to stare at Juushiro from a distance and never believe himself capable of reaching out, but it was as if a switch had been flipped and a blanket of nervousness had settled all over him.

Juushiro’s hang tightened around his.

“Are you okay? Your fingers are trembling.”

Shunsui avoided looking at him.

“Must be all this excitement. I have been looking forward to this ever since you said yes.”

With a firm tug of their entwined hands, Juushiro dragged Shunsui away from the heavy set gates and the blaring music beyond, into the little nook that opened into the girls’ washroom that had been out of repair for years now. No one was going to come and disturb them here.

Dating an alumnus of his own school had never sucked so bad before.

“Okay, I am just as excited as you, maybe even more given I was convinced I was never going to experience this, _but_ I also know this isn’t the excited trembling. What gave it away? The fact that you aren’t looking at me.”

It was a struggle to drag his eyes up to Juushiro’s face but if he was going to convincingly lie…

“Don’t bother lying.” Juushiro shook his head.

“Dammit, stop making this more difficult!” Meanwhile they remained holding hands.

“Look if this is a long-ish discussion we can put it off till this is done but I am not letting you-…”

“No! No, no, no. Look, my mind is just acting stupid and I am feeling… weirdly nervous.”

Juushiro blinked.

“I mean that’s normal, isn’t it? You’ve been looking forward to this all year and now it’s finally time-…”

“It’s not about that,” Shunsui sighed. “It’s you.”

Juushiro stuttered, his mouth falling into a flat line.

“Not like how it sounds, it’s just… You’re perfect, you’re amazing and talented and beautiful and I can’t think of one reason why you’d want to be with me and now it’s not just one date to prom. This has become so much more and I don’t understand why, you know. Why are you with me?”

Juushiro’s shoulders slumped in relief.

“Oh thank god! I thought you were going to dump me!”

Shunsui felt himself sighing in exasperation, because in no world was Kyouraku Shunsui dumping Ukitake Juushiro a thing that could happen.

“We really need to work on that thought process of yours.”

Shunsui tugged Juushiro closer.

Juushiro, however, seemed to have had a revelation.

“Well, that’s it, isn’t it? We’re both anxious sometimes because this is all so new to both of us. We have underlying insecurities, your self-esteem and my fear of being used and abandoned, and we trigger them in each other because we admire each other so much!”

Shunsui let Juushiro’s words wash over him, knowing they made perfect sense and trying to bring himself to settle into them. He didn’t find himself fully convinced, even though Juushiro’s logic was flawless.

“Like I know it’s not healthy, but come on, Shun. Is the face or the money any of the reasons you’re into me?”

Shunsui couldn’t help the chuckle that fell from his lips.

“I mean the face doesn’t hurt and I have definitely had a thing for you since _before_ you had the money, that is, if you don’t come from a family of wealth of course, which I had no idea of so that just means my statement still stands, so on the whole, no. I adore everything about you and I-…”

“Got it. Shut up.”

“Mm-kay.”

“Then why do you assume any of it matters to me? Or I would think less of you for it?”

Shunsui shook his head.

“I don’t think _you_ would think less of me, as it is. It’s not a targeted fear like that. It’s just me, in my head. I trust you, but I don’t know if I think I deserve you or not.”

“You do.”

“You don’t have anything to corro-…”

“Listen to your elders, you ungrateful brat.”

Juushiro tilted his head, bringing their mouths closer to each other’s. Shunsui’s scrambling thoughts hit pause and he tongue darted out to flit across Juushiro’s bottom lip. The hand that wasn’t clasped around Juushiro’s rose to rest on his hip.

“These insecurities of ours are clearly things we’ll have to work out, over time. Maybe take some couple’s therapy for this power imbalance that I hadn’t realised upto this point worked both ways. We’re going to take these crazy fears down, one day at a time. Are you willing to embark on that journey with me?”

Shunsui stared, feeling his heart brim with something warm and loving. He let himself savour the rush of emotions, kissing Juushiro deeply before replying,

“Yeah. We are worth it.”

Juushiro grinned.

“Okay, L’oreal Paris. Into the hall with you, then.”

…

The night was, in short, one of the happiest of Shunsui’s entire life.

The weirdest thing his friends had done was Rangiku nearly screaming, ‘the celebrity boyfriend arrives!’ But then she had gotten a selfie with Juushiro and calmed down. Starrk gave a little nod of acknowledgement, but that was more than he was expecting anyway and Retsu, for one, seemed to get along well with Juushiro and promised to stick by him anytime Shunsui had to go anywhere so there was that.

The best part of the entire night, however, was the dance the first dance they shared.

_Please Forgive Me_ by Bryan Adams was playing when Juushiro held his hand out to Shunsui, a sweet smile on his face and his eyes full of something scarily similar to what was pooling in Shunsui’s own stomach.

Shunsui allowed himself to be pulled to the dance floor, unable to look away from the face of his beautiful, beautiful partner. When Juushiro stepped to lead the dance with a quirked brow, all Shunsui did was shake his head with an embarrassed giggle and hide his face in the side of Juushiro’s neck, finding it all too comforting to be leaning on his partner’s strong shoulders with his arms all around him.

“This is such a cliche song.”, Juushiro mumbled, sounding nowhere near irritated by the fact.

“It’s perfect, though. You’re perfect.”

_“First time our eyes met, same feeling I get…”_ he began singing along.

_“Only feels much stronger, I wanna love you longer…”_ Juushiro finished, immediately cringing and complaining about how dorky they were both being with a raging blush on his cheeks.

Their eyes found each other again, and they leaned in for a soft, sweet kiss that left Shunsui’s entire body tinging down to his toes.

The rest of the night was spent glued to each other’s side, Shunsui feeling physically unable to take his hands off of Juushiro, all too aware of where their sides were flush against each other. Juushiro’s long hair hanging from his ponytail and brushing against the small of his back only served to set Shunsui’s heart racing. 

Juushiro fit perfectly next to him. It felt better than anything he could think of.

The drive back home was rife with sexual tension, and that may or may not have been the fault of Shunsui’s teasing hand on Juushiro’s clothed crotch.

Clothes were being ripped off sooner than Shunsui had realised they were at his place and not Juushiro’s. Very well, he thought in the back of his head. It would be easier to fix Juushiro breakfast tomorrow morning.

They were stumbling their way through his dark living room, much like that first time, with Juushiro’s hands groping Shunsui’s ass and Shunsui’s own hands cupping Juushiro’s face. They parted for breath, and unable to control himself any longer, Shunsui reached out to tug on Juushiro’s ponytail.

“This…” he panted. “This has been driving me insane _all night._ ”

Juushiro grinned.

Kissing up the side of Shunsui’s neck, he whispered into his ear,

“Perfect to tug on while you take me from the back, isn’t it?”

They didn’t spend a lot of time in the living room after that.

…

Shunsui, in fact, did take Juushiro from the back, and then rode him till he came. Then they did it all over again, with Shunsui bent over his desk this time. It was mind-blowing, so much so that, generally shameless Shunsui blushed when he saw Juushiro’s neck the next morning, dotted with the red of his kisses and bites from the night before.

Just like every other time of the day, Juushiro looked absolutely breathtaking early in the morning, with his long hair falling over his face and his mouth parted in soft snored and rumbling breaths. Reaching for his phone, Shunsui took a picture, immediately setting it as his home screen.

It was pretty early and neither of them had anywhere to be, so Shunsui settled back down into the seats, his arm falling across Juushiro’s naked hip. Seeking the warmth of Shunsui’s body, Juushiro immediately scooted over to him, burrowing his face in Shunsui’s chest. Shunsui cradled him closer.

He couldn’t believe how happy he was feeling. Not only had he taken his years-long crush to prom, he had managed to forge a deeper, sweeter bond along the way.

… something tasting like lazy mornings and sloppy kissing, like holding hands down the streets and tasting crazy weird dishes together, like watching romcoms Shunsui was starting to become quite a fan of (not that he would admit it to Juushiro), like the portrait he had done of Juushiro in the sea green that he had said was his favourite colour, sitting carefully wrapped up underneath the bed, a gift for Juushiro to wake up to.

… something tasting a lot like love.

Shunsui smiled and pecked Juushiro's cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment and let me know what you thought.
> 
> Come scream at me about Bleach on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/shamelessllamapeanutthing)

**Author's Note:**

> Comment and let me know what you thought.
> 
> Come scream at me about Bleach on [Tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/shamelessllamapeanutthing)


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